Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 527 - Brain Fog

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Sorry for the delay on this one! Dr Steve, Dr Scott, Tacie and PA Lydia discuss: Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants (ASIA) syndrome Post Partum Breast Issues Naloxone for brain fog Naltrexone Low Dose for fibromyalgia Mammography, MRI, with or without Implants CRISPR as the new frontier in cancer therapy? Using essential oils in CPAP machines (don't do it) Delayed ejaculation due to antidepressants 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

Why did the cow do jumping jacks? She was practicing her cow aesthetics. What do Keanu Reeves and Baby Yoda have in common? They age at the same rate. What do you call an ostrich in a cornfield? A crop duster. 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, uh, 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 subalovir stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my incredible woes.

I want to take my brain out. Plastic width of the wave, an ultrasonic, agographic, and a pulsating shave. I want a magic pill. All my ailments. The health equivalent is citizens. and cane. And if I don't get it now in the tablet, I think I'm doomed, then I'll have to go insane.

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Dr. Scott, a traditional Chinese medical practitioner who gives me street cred with the wackle, alternative medicine assholes. Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. And my partner in all things, Tacey. Hello, Tacey. Hello. And back from two-week sabbatical, it is P.A. Lydia, everybody. Hello. Nice to see you, P.A. Lydia. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet.

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Dottersteve.com. Tis the season. So check out all the cool things on Amazon, but go there through stuff. Dr.steve.com. And if you have someone who plays guitar or bass or mandolin or anything like that on your shopping list, scroll down and look at the roadie robotic tuner,

under 200 bucks coolest thing that you'll buy for them ever and if you're looking for something like that that doesn't cost thousands and thousands of dollars for the holidays the roadie robotic tuner can't be beat check out simply

herbals.net that's Dr. Scott's website what's going on at simplyerbils.net Dr. Scott. We're going to start those holiday specials coming up. What do you got? nasal sprays we've got the ones with and without CBD oil that may or may not block certain So what kind of specials are you going to have?

You can talk about it on this show. Oh, that's right. That's right. So with the fatigue reprieve and a stress list, both, you can buy like two and get one for free. Yeah, it's a good deal. That's a good. I can't remember what. That's a 33% discount.

Yeah, we try to pattern after the tweaked audio. Yeah, and if you want just some earbuds to throw in that are high quality with the great customer service, check out tweakeda audio.com. That's T-W-E-A-K-E-D-A-D-A-D-A-O-O-O-D-O-O-C-O-C-O-C-O-C-E-A-C-T-E-A-R-T-E-A-T-T-E-A-R-M-E-T-E-E-T-E-E-E-E-S-E-W-E-E-W-S-W-G-E-E-W-S-T-E-E-W-S-E-W-S-W-E-E-W-S-E-W-T-E-W-S-E-E-T-W-F-E-W-F-E-E-E-L-V-V-F-E-F-E-M-M-E-E-E-L-V-E-V-L-L But fall in love with the handsome fire chief. Yeah, like they got real decisions to make there. They do. That starts Friday.

Always with the fucking decisions, these women on these movies. Oh, you just get ready. Successful career or hot man. Right. That loves you. But then they turn the small town business into a successful career. So you just get it all. They get it all, right.

With boobs, usually. Yeah. A lot of times they do. So excited. Can't wait. Get ready, Steve. I think I'm over home. Hey, make sure if anybody does buy anything, make sure they always say they're weird medicine friends. Oh, yeah. We'll put them a little extra swag in there. Oh, yeah. A little bit. It's nothing special. I think it's a stupid poker chip. It's a pretty cool poker chip. And then do you still have the autographed things? I do have the autograph things. And if we run out of that, we throw them in a...

We're going to have new autograph things. We had a... We had an art. It probably doesn't work anymore. We still have them. You still have some of the pens? I think I might have one. I still have some. We have an artist do us as the Simpsons, you know, in the Simpsons style.

And so we're going to have that, and we will have Bristol Stool Scale mugs very soon. Once again, once again, we used to have Bristol Stool Scale mugs, and now we're going to have them for sale, and I'll let you know. That is a great gift. And if you want the best white elephant gift for a Christmas or Hanukkah party or Kwanza party or whatever, any gift exchange, go to flatus flute.com. We get nothing for that, but it is hilarious. And so it's a whistling butt plug. And it is the dumbest thing you'll ever see. And the artwork is brilliant.

Son of Fritz did the artwork and Danny up in Canada. and makes these things, and so it's brilliant. So fletus flute.com. And check us out on Patreon, patreon.com slash Weird Medicine. That's loads of fun. And 100% of your questions, if you call us in a

question to the Patreon, it will get answered. So, I mean, for five bucks a month, we would be shitheads if we did any less than that. And sometimes we have celebrities on there who ask us questions. And then check out

Camio.com slash, or camio, yeah, camio.com slash weird medicine. Matter of fact, the four of us are going to do a cameo as soon as we're done with us. And then we'll go down and look at Liam's car because we've got a really special cameo that we need to do. That's very important. Okay. All right. Well, welcome back, Pia, Lydia. Thank you.

Good to be here. And it's good to see you. We were supposed to have a person with giant breast implants call in today. And she was actually supposed to be here in the studio So you could like, I don't know Fondle them and stuff And just see Does she live close?

She does, yeah Scientific purposes And she also had a story to tell I don't know if she, I think she got cold feats what happened Which is totally fine I didn't have to touch them Yeah, no, I know

And she didn't have to even be here We could have done it by phone But she may have Just, you know, decided This wasn't, you know, a good thing for her So Well, that's fine. And it is totally fine. And so I'll just talk about it. She had breasts that she was not satisfied with and said, if I'm going to get boobs, I'm going by God get boobs. And so she went to this guy and got some really, you know, a full whatever. I don't even know what her cup sizes. Yeah, yeah. She got the real deal. And about two years later, she came down with this room. And so we talked about it, you know, on the era, there's a very rare thing called autoimmune syndrome induced by adjuvants, which is not well recognized nor even there are people who feel that it doesn't even exist.

And but the research that I did showed that there might be an estimated one and a million women or something that this will happen to. So the odds are really low. But I did want you to meet somebody that this had happened to. What happens with some of these folks is they will get a thing called undifferentiated autoimmune disorder. Now, do you ever deal with that, Dr. Scott at all? So do you want to talk about it a little bit about what? what happens when this occurs? You know, we see it probably a lot more than a lot of others

just because it's being undifferentiated. There's not a specific, you know, there's nothing specific to treat, which is, you know, in the Western world, you guys do great things when there's something very specific. If there's an infection or a broken bone or a, you know, a surgical procedure. Yeah. And that's why Western medicine's so superior in that aspect. Well, in that aspect.

But, yeah, we've got to have a down. Am diagnosis. Yeah, but when you don't have a diagnosis or so so vague, which we, so we'll see these, these autoimmune disorders that are very vague, non-specific, you know, the fibromyaloges, et cetera. So, but this, what you're talking about, these type of things, for whatever people, people get these adjuvants, they're, and their body creates this robust immune response to it. So they get inflammation all over.

A lot of time, it's associated with, with myalges, so muscle pains. arthritic changes, arthritic pains, chronic fatigue syndromes, et cetera. So we'll do actually do acupuncture, craniosacral manipulates on them. We use a lot of astragulus for them, you know. What a surprise. It's the greatest, the greatest herbal medicine ever. But the truth is we do use it quite a fit for brain fog. Yeah.

So they'll say, you know, these people have this sort of features of connective tissue disease, but they don't fulfill the diagnostic criteria for any specific one. And so, but they'll have some abnormal labs and stuff now. So this particular person, whether hers is related to the breast implants or not, it's impossible to say. It really is impossible to say. And again, this is a very loose, loosely associated problem that a lot of people, in the business don't agree that it even exists.

Do you think it's possible that she may have had a couple of that in addition to maybe a reaction to maybe a flu shot or maybe a sinus infection? You know, and I'm not saying any of those things caused specifically, but maybe sometimes it's a cascade of insults that the body just didn't tolerate well and blew up this inflammatory response. Or, you know, when it could just be the shit just happens sometimes. And when it does, you're always going to. to look for what caused.

The low-hanging fruit. We see this with, for example, with vaccines and certain conditions that children have and stuff that really they've done the studies and there's not an association, but you're always going to look for that thing. And the most extreme example I can give, or the most clear example, is the flu shot example, which we've talked about multiple times on the show, but not everybody remembers or listens fanatically to every single show. Sean Pedrick can recite this, I'm sure.

Yay, for Sean. Other than Sean. And it's the person who gets exposed to influenza on Friday. And so they're going to develop influenza on Wednesday. But they get their flu shot on Tuesday. Okay? So they were going to get it. The virus is in their system, but they feel fine.

They haven't started to have symptoms yet. And, but it's going to happen on Wednesday. They get their flu shot on Tuesday. On Wednesday, they get influenza. You will never be able to convince that person they didn't get influenza from the flu shot, even though it's impossible. So, yeah, and when someone has breast implants or anything like that, and then some rheumatologic thing comes down, the pike it could be years later, you're always going to wonder or try to blame it on that thing because it's the one. sort of different thing that happened to them. So it may not have anything to do with it.

But I really, I just wanted to see you grabbing her boobs here in the studio. I've never felt fake boobs before. You can go ahead and grab Tacey's boobs if you want. Because apparently they give you like breast implants to like play with before you get them. Or maybe wear. Really? Oh, you can wear them? Yeah.

Well, you know, pop them in a bra like walk around. But it's not the same. You don't know how it's going to be like once it's under your pectoral. that's right that's right right yeah so yeah anyway hmm or above it if you go above well in two weeks because this part of the bit failed we will have an adult film person on here who has you know I was trying to you know lady diagnosis has sort of normal sized implants and then this other person had bigger implants and this next person will have extreme implants And then we had somebody calling in that has breast implants.

And I think, well, I can't remember this story either. She works for plastic surgery. She had plastic surgery. And she emailed me basically saying, well, everything Lady Diagnosis said was wrong, which I don't know. So I don't think that's exactly right. But she took issue with some of the things that she had to say about it if there was anything. Maybe it was some of the negative stuff that she said. Well, what specifically did she say?

Well, I'm going to have her in the very last thing. Oh, okay. She's would be somebody that would be sort of a modifying influence on all of this. Okay. And I think a positive influence and we'll have her on. Cool. So, yeah. Thank you for reaching out.

Yeah. Well, I mean, if I can do a long, you know, running bit about boobs on this show. Oh, it's all in. That's kind of a no brain. See, there's a culture there, right? Some guys are all about the natural small boobs and others are like, you better do it while you can. Seal your deal for getting a man. Yeah.

Oh, wow, I don't know. That's the advice I got recently. From a guy? From a male friend. Of course, what are they going to say? Better do it in your prime because, you know, if you're 60 and you get a boob job. It's still awesome. You're out of your prime.

No, that's still awesome. I think that's just fine. Now, yeah, some people like small natural breasts. Some people like large natural breasts, though, too. Correct. So there's a whole gamut. There's somebody for everybody. Yeah, it's just finding that.

So increasing your probability of finding someone that will want you. I want to make sure that, let's talk about this for a second. You don't want some guy that wouldn't be interested in you if you didn't have implants, though, right? You wouldn't want some guy that. Absolutely would not. Right. Right. So you're doing this for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not for that. Things just change after you have a baby and your breastfeeding? Yeah, yeah. If you just... Absolutely. Yeah. Not that I ever had much, but, you know. Yeah. Yeah, so if you're doing it for yourself, then that's the right reason. Yes, it's not for a potential mate. Then we will proceed.

Okay. All right, good deal. Or matron. I'm just saying. It's just not for anybody. It's just not for anybody. It's right. All right. Dr. Scott, you got anything for us? No. No? Oh.

What? I said you'd like 20 things over the break. Oh, by the way, speaking of the break, the WATP Weird Medicine Crossover episode on Sirius XM was quite successful. And I got a lot of really good feedback for the people that listen on Sirius XM. It didn't come out on the podcast. I'm going to talk to them, see if they'll let us, you know, put it on our Patreon and then maybe slide it over to the podcast side later. And, but it was, Carl did an amazing job.

And if you want to hear more of what he's doing over there, go to, who are these. Dot, pod, dot com, I think. Who are these dot com? Yeah, that's right. Or just search on your podcast app, who are these podcasts? And it's a roast show. He does Jocktober. Basically, it's just Jock.

October. He freely admits he stole the idea from Sam Roberts in Jocktober. He was a big Opian Anthony fan. He loved Jocktober, but he does it with podcasts. Except during October, then they do it, the regular Jocktober. They do it about radio shows. I'm so confused. And it's so much fun. Yeah, we're all very confused. Yeah, well, you guys are, but you guys don't know what Jocktober is. So I'm imagining things. I have images in my head. Yeah, so they make fun of men. They make, like in their jockey. Oh, I see. No, no, no, no. Okay. So radio jocks, right? Oh.

So jock to over. Yeah. So like shock jocks or whatever. And radio jocks, so they would make fun of other radio shows. And back in the day, they would, these sons of bitches, it was so great, they had the Opium Anthony Army. And they would target some radio show that was just, you know, they were doing a bad job. And so it was funny. and they would have different phases

of what was going on with their Facebook page so first they would notice something was happening that was phase one and then phase two they would shut off comments and then phase three they would take their Facebook page down completely and you know the fans

of those shows, Daisy and I used to say the fans of Opian Anthony Ron and Fez were some of the best parts because they were hilarious and they really did funny things. So that's That's what that was. And so he took this and did it, you know, there's way more any podcasts out there than there are terrestrial radio shows.

So he started goofing on podcasts. But then in October, he would go back to the regular format and make fun of radio shows. So anyway. Yeah, I got you. So I'm trying to see if Jim and Sam would be interested in having Carl on like once every couple of months and, you know, bring in a radio show to goof on. and then he plays clips and they just do jokes. You know, it's a roast.

It's just roast stuff. It's nothing serious. But anyway, so we'll see. But I appreciate Carl doing that. He did a great job. So, but you have a story or two to tell? Did you bring anything today? I got a little something.

Oh, you do? I got something to discuss. Okay. Yeah. And I've got one. And actually, a movie massage, got a good question when it's time to do. Okay. Yeah, yeah, sure.

Yeah, so, so the one I brought today was pardon me is an addiction drug that shows promise for lifting long haul COVID brain fog fatigue That's interesting So which one is it Naloxone I would give you a bill

But I don't have a bill to give you Give yourself a bill I give it myself one Yeah I was going to say so long haul I really I just guessed that but it makes sense And I'll tell you why I'm sorry Yeah I want to hear how Why it makes sense to you because it's interesting

that it took these guys a while to figure it out. We typically use, because we treat long-haul COVID with our fatigue reprieve because it's got, again, I know it's crazy, but the straggles in it. But the fatigue reprieve actually works extremely well. Can you like, shut up? So don't let that, don't let that cloud your foggy brain. Okay. But yeah, so anyway, what the researchers have found out is long-haul COVID,

which is really tough to, again, diagnose and treat, as we talked about earlier. Yeah, well, it's because it has such a diffuse collection of symptoms that... Yeah, non-specific, diffuse symptoms. Some of those could be any damn thing. PTSD from COVID as well, you know, you just don't know. But anyway, go ahead. Well, and we're still so young and so new in the game that we don't really know what it's, you know, long-term or long-haul COVID's going to be. Anyway, you're all right, it's naloxone, you know, the drug that's been treated,

used to treat, you know, drug overdoses for years and years and years, I guess. And, but what they're showing is it has been shown some, some benefits as far as cognitive deficits, overwhelming fatigues, and some chronic pain syndrome. Interesting. Which is really incredible. What dose are they using, do they say? Well, I was looking down through your, Dr. Steve. It didn't say, but, oh, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

At 50 milligrams, which is, which is a low dose. That's the dose that they use for addiction. Okay. And it helps to block. Okay, so naloxone is a thing called a mu-opioid receptor blocker. Now, that's just off the top of my head because I did not know that's what they were using, but it makes sense to me. But naloxone does some interesting things. When you give someone low-dose naloxone, and now we'll use 4.5 milligrams, very low-dose naloxone, for things like fibromyalgium.

So if you know someone that has fibromyalgia and they've tried everything else, they've tried the lyrica and the neurotin and all that, like, capapentin and all that stuff, and nothing's worked as long as they're not already on opioids. You know, if somebody just didn't put them on percocet or something, you can give those people low-dose naloxone. It's 4.5 milligrams. It has to be compounded. Nobody sells it. But you go to a compounding pharmacy. And what the theory behind this is that when it blocks the mu opioid receptors, these are the receptors that morphine and oxycodone and hydromorphone and all those drugs will bind to that cause their effects. What are the effects?

Sleepiness, decreased bowel function, decreased sensation of pain, that kind of stuff. And high enough doses, decreased respiratory drive. I mean, they got lots of different effects. And they affect organ systems all over the place. But the one we're interested in is the central nervous system perception of pain. And when you give someone a low dose of this in the absence of an opioid, it will bind to those opioid receptors in the central nervous system. And you know what can't bind now is what we call endogenous opioids or endorphins. So the endorphins for that brief time can't do their thing

because they're being blocked by this low-dose naloxone. But it's such a low dose that it's very transient. But in the meantime, these endorphins are building up and the body's going, hey, I've got to make more of this stuff. And then when it washes out, these things will flood the receptors. And they really work a little differently than opioids do. They, you know, they work on the same as messengers to the same receptors, but they work a little differently. And what that does is cause a decrease in overall pain in people with fibromyalgia.

So it's off topic, but I wanted to get that out there because I know there's probably way more people out there with fibromyalgia listening to this show or they know somebody that is than people who have long COVID. And if you know somebody, email me and I'll send you the paper so they can take it into their provider and the provider can, the provider can educate themselves about it. Well, that's a good idea. But anyway, matter of fact, I authored a paper on it, but don't Google that. So is that something that I could like roll out in my own clinical practice? Of course. Because right now I do like effects are in prey. Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. No, you can do it right now. Yeah. It's not a controlled substance. Right. And I could do that if it was. But you could anyway. That's right.

But, I mean, it's harder to get a controlled substance compounded, but that, you know, that can be done as well. We do ketamine suppositories for people with rectal pain, you know, have rectal cancer and stuff all the time. But, yeah, you can do that tomorrow, and I'll get you the papers and all that stuff so you can back yourself up. I have smart phrases. It's such a frustrating syndrome to treat. Yeah. No, it is. It's really frustrating for the patient.

And it's frustrating for the provider, too, because you want. your patients to be, to get better. Yeah, you want them to come back and say they feel better and it's very difficult. I've had really good luck with that and even other chronic pain syndromes as long as they're not already on opioids because if they are, now the opioid and the naloxone will just fight and it doesn't do any good. So can I ask you a question about that? Wouldn't you discontinue the opiates?

Yeah, but they've got to be off of them for a while. Yeah, because to me that would make the most sense. Yeah, if you could get somebody to be. buy-in. Yeah, it'd be some buy-in. If they're on a high dose, they'd have to taper over. I mean, I've tapered people over three months before. I mean, I go easy.

I got a cancer patient that got cranked up on opioids because of chronic cancer pain, and then they get treated and their pain goes away. Now you've got to get them off. I've done three-month tapers before. If you've got somebody that's on 20 milligrams twice a day, it can take a month to humanely get them off their drug. And so that's a big commitment for somebody if they, if you don't know if this stuff's going to work, you know. Yeah.

So, but even then there's probably some benefit to it because if they did have to go back on the opioid, they can go back on a much lower dose. Sure. Anyway, so 50 milligrams of naloxone is what they're using for post-COVID syndrome. And are they, so you said it's mostly for the brain fog? Yeah, primarily brain fog, but they are showing it helps them with the pain and with the fatigue. Yeah, so what if the brain fog is caused by an overexpression of endorphins in the brain? Because they act like opioids. Maybe that's where the fog is coming from.

And there's maybe some mechanism that's causing an overexpression. And when you give people this slightly higher dose, but it's 10 times higher than the low dose Naltrexone is what we use. They may, you know, it may actually block that and give them. some relief from the foggy activity of endogenous or internally created opioid-like molecules. So that might be a... Hmm. Yeah.

And it's low-dose naltrexone is what we use, but naloxone very similar molecules. But that's where all the studies have been done for the ultra-low-dose stuff. Anyway, all right. That's good stuff, Dr. D. Yeah. Very interesting.

Very interesting. So I'm going to pass that on to our long COVID clinic because I wasn't aware of that study. So if you'll forward that to me, that was a good one, Scott. Yes. Give yourself a bill. Give you a bell for bringing in a good story. Might help somebody. One to one.

It's definitely going to be changed to some of my patients, I think. Yeah. Some of my management. Yeah. What else you got? You got anything else you want to do? Yeah. I've got a real quick question from moving my side, which is actually right on point.

He was asking as far as breast augmentation, if someone gets a breast implant, can they still have a mammogram? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. They can. And I've seen tons of them. It can make some things more difficult, which is, again, I think, well, I mean, it's not in the breast tissue. It's either on top of it or below the pectoral muscle.

So if it's below the pectoral muscle, particularly, all the breast tissue is, you know, separate from it. above it, yeah. Yeah, front center. Good question. Yeah, we see that all the time. Yeah, good question. You know, they'll say, you know, this person has XCC breast augmentation as part of the reading of the mammogram. Okay.

Now, I wonder, I do wonder, I know if you squish breast implants, you know, if you have them in your hand, not inside somebody's body. But, I mean, you know, if they just hand you the actual implants, you can squish them pretty pretty tightly because Tacey, you've probably had more mammograms here than anybody in the room. When they do that, they really compress the crap out. They really do. Preciate. Right.

Pancake. Yeah. So I was always concerned about that, but when you feel the breast implant, it can take it. Yeah, it doesn't hurt. How can that not hurt? It just doesn't. I've heard some people say that it does, but it doesn't hurt me.

Yeah. And I have sensation and everything and it doesn't. Yeah. I know that there's not a lot of sensory fibers in breast tissue itself because back in the day when I was doing primary care, I would do needle aspirations of breast cysts, and you would do it without anesthesia. Because if you did anesthesia, it hurt longer than just doing it.

Yeah. And once the needle. was in there they had no pain whatsoever it's a very uncomfortable position you know okay tell us about the position because I don't even know I don't even know how to describe it you have to contort and stick your so you put your arm over your head in this well and you hold on to this one thing and you hold on to this other thing over your head you hug a tree it's like that but then they take

they have you in different positions so it's just it's crazy While they're squishing your boob or they're unsquished. And they help you get into the position because it's not easy to get it all. I mean, I guess. Because the machine, and this is going on somewhere, like in dental imaging, you know, kind of rotates around your face. Does this move to? Yeah, it goes around. Okay.

If I remember right. Not with your breast in between two plates, though. They don't, like, start moving it around. That would be horrible. It squeezes it and then. Rotates. Okay. And it goes.

If I remember right. How can you forget that? Have you ever had a 3D mammogram? Hey, Dr. Steve, road trip. I've never. I wonder if that's any different, the 3D mammography. It's supposed to be better, right? Well, all four of us are just throwing out, well, I wonder if, you know, I don't know either.

I just wondered if it was like a different process. But then there's breast MRI, of course. I was just going to say that, that breast MRI, you don't have to do any of that, right? But you have to lay in that tube. And MRIs, okay, when I. was training in the 80s, a CT scan would take 45 minutes. And they had giant mainframe computers in there. Now you could do it on a laptop, basically. And so when I had my first MRI, you know, 15 years ago or something, it was 45 minutes. I figured, well, hell, that'll get better. It has it. It's still

45 minutes to do one. I had a finger, a nodule on my finger, and this orthopedist wanted me to get an MRI of the finger. So I thought I'd just sit in the chair and stick my hand in there. Oh, hell no. I was on all fours. In the tube, on all fours. I know it's hilarious with my, and I was praying to Jesus if you get me out of here.

You can do that. What percentage of your patients can actually do that? And not move. I was in so much pain. just from having all my weight on my elbows and my knees. And with my hand in front of me, and I don't know why you have to do it that way. And, yeah, I was praying to the good Lord above,

if you can get me out of this thing, Lord, I'll never, I'll never curse again. It was awful. When are they recommending mammograms now? It's 40 and above? Yeah, I'm looking at the American Cancer Society guidelines. It says women ages 40 to 44 should have the choice to start annual breast cancer screening with mammograms if they wish to do so. Then women 45 to 54 should get mammograms every year. And then women 55 and older should switch to mammograms every two years or they can continue yearly screening.

They're just saying they should. And screening should continue as long as a woman is in good health and is expected to live 10 years. or longer. Thank you. Okay. And all women should be familiar with the known benefits, limitations, potential harms, linked to breast cancer screening. All right.

And as always, women should know how their breasts normally look and feel and report any breast changes to a health care provider right away. Okay, doke. Now, oh, you mentioned MRI. They actually bring that up. They say because of their family history or a genetic tendency or other factors, some women should be screened with MRIs along. with mammograms. The women that fall into this category are very small. I would assume it would

be burqa positive. Yeah, BRCA, check 2, palpi 2. You want to talk about what that is? Yeah, so that's where you have inherited a mutation from either parent in a gene that should normally protect you from cancer. So normally if a cell starts going rogue through DNA division, your body would recognize that perhaps through one of these genes like BRCA 1 or 2, palbi 2, or check 2, and turn that process off. So stop that cell line. If you have a mutation that's causing a defect in that gene, then you will not turn that cell line off. And you would be more likely to develop cancer. Okay. And knowing that you're more likely to have cancer means that you're probably less likely to die from it because you'll catch it earlier. You'll do something proactively to take

care of it. Yeah, so you start screening earlier, so 10 years earlier than you're the youngest first-degree relative. And then I usually, so the guidelines recommend annual MRI and annual mammogram. So we split those every six months. You're getting some type of imaging. Okay. If you don't do prophylactic mastectomy. Yeah, which means cutting your breast tissue off. Right. I had a time before, just cutting it off of the pass. And then you can, then those women, some of them will have reconstruction, some won't. Some of them just say to hell with it. I just don't want to mess with breast cancer.

I don't, you know, I'm going to take care of this before it happens. Yep. Yeah, and a lot of women will choose, you know, they'll have their kids first and then go toward it. Do you think that in the future we could have some sort of CRISPR technology where we could just fix the defect that causes the brach of, you know, mutation? I don't know, because your cell lines are already like, differentiated right to doing it in the backwards setting would be very difficult yeah but you do turn over though i mean you've heard of the ship of theseus right where you know you keep replacing

boards and the ship and down you know a hundred years from now there's not a single board there's there but everybody people have lived on that ship consistently the whole time i would imagine our bodies are kind of like that the nerve cells don't turn over like that but other cells do i just wonder I would certainly, like, I would expect it to significantly reduce the risk of developing cancer if you were able to do that. Again, this is the speculation show. We're speculating about lots of stuff. We don't know what the hell we're talking about. What you can do and why it's important to get tested early is that, you know, you can go to fertility specialists if you know that you have a mutation.

And they can select for eggs or sperm that do not have a mutation. So, yeah, so I do our genetic counseling. I didn't know that. I'm not a genetic counselor. Right. I work in oncology, but I see patients who say, you know, they just got diagnosed with breast cancer or their mom has breast cancer, something like that.

So the benefit of early testing is if you're, you know, if you know that you have one of these mutations that will convey an increased risk of cancer, you can go to a fertility specialist and have the egg or sperm selected, right? Because you only have it. You have a 50-50 chance of passing on that mutation to your off-person. spring. How in the hell do they do that? So then you do your in vitro fertilization and they test the genetics of the eggs and sperm,

and they select and match only those without the mutation. I was like you. I was like, how are they going to do that once the seed is implanted? Right, right, right. So then they plant the seed outside of the body. Right on. Yeah. That makes sense.

Wow. Yeah. Interesting. Well, thank you. I'll give you a bell. Give yourself a bill. Daisy, you're the only one. I have one.

Bill. Give her one just because he's awesome. You don't just give out bells. But she's awesome. She gets one. I agree with you, Scott. Number one thing,

don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. All right. You ready? We have one that's right up your alley, Scott.

And then this one, let's try this one. Let's see. Oh, no. No, don't, come on. There we go. Hey, Dr. Steve.

I got a question for you. Or maybe that wizard, Dr. Scott, that sits next to you. I use a CPAP machine and I fill it with water. I tend not to fill it with water because it's annoying, but I probably should. But so is there something that I could put in the water to make it beneficial to my health? Maybe right now, like when I got a cold, some menthol or something like that. I don't know. Maybe some crazy powders from some Asian places.

Astragalus. You're starting to sound like Dr. Steve. So, yeah, what do you think about that? Well, my first thing is I'm not going to tell anybody to put anything in there in the CPAP or anything. No, heck no. The manufacturers would say no. No, they would frown upon it. Yeah.

But now, there are natural occurring or natural antimicrobial agents like oregano oil, you know, peppermint oil, things of that nature. Maybe something you could use, but not, I'm not going to tell anybody to put anything in the CPAP machine. Follow the directions that are on the box or that your providers have given you and stick with that. But now, you know, he could always use a fancy nasal spray that maybe has pepperminal. That's what I was going to say is do something. You're simply herbal nasal sprays which are fabulous. I am at CPAP.com, that famous medical journal. And it has an article, how to safely put essential oils in your CPAP for aromatherap.

Oh, well. And then, okay. But this is not coming from reading. Hang on, hang on. And then you come down here and it says, putting essential oils in your CPAP machine is not safe. So, you know, what clickbait title? It says it does not matter if you put them in the machine itself in the hose or the mask or in the filter or in the CPAP humidifier. So it says here, according to Randy Horowitz from the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine,

if you add essential oils to a CPAP machine, the device could propel drop. of the oil deep into your lungs. In an interview with Dr. Andrew Weil, oh, you know, we know who Andrew Weil is. Dr. Hurwitz warns that even a small amount might cause lung irritation. So we're going to say no to that one. Now, but if you want to get some nasal spray that has peppermint oil in it and without, you know, it's FDA approved, right, to the extent that it can be.

That's correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. then that's, you know, that's between you and Dr. Scott. Yep, yeah. All right? Yeah, but I wouldn't put anything in the... No. Nope.

Sorry, dude. Yep, sorry, man. It's a cool idea, but I wouldn't do it. I'm, actually, you know, Martin Hoke from Navaj will tell you that unless it comes in one of his salt pods, don't put anything in the Navage either, the Navage device, which if you go out on our YouTube channel, you could see NPMLB doing the Navaj. And it's funny because she hates things going in her nose, so she was quite humorous about it.

But he has salt pods that have menthol in him. And that actually feels really good when you do that. And you get that sort of mental, you know, tingly. Yeah, tingly. I like it. I like it, too. So anyway, all right. Here, this is one for you. Hey, Dr. Steve.

This is Terry, otherwise known as the. bootmaster. Okay. Hey, Terry. You've been extremely helpful to me in a number of ways over the past years, and I need your help now. Okay. I have nine discs that they want to fuse, cervical and thoracic. Okay. I can't do that in my own head. Two reasons. One is I have an issue with anesthesia, not coming out of it. Number two is I don't need to be more robot than human. So, well, you wouldn't be, but I agree.

The problem I have is significant pain. The pain comes usually at the base of my skull. It can be either side. Usually goes down my neck and to my upper back. It can be extremely debilitating. In other days, I can be

human. One of the things that happens and one of the reasons why I'm calling is there's something that's unusual that happens. And what that is, is if I sit or stand and look up 15 degrees 20 degrees from straight plane if I look up a little bit and I do it for more than 30 seconds or so putting in a light bulb talking to somebody who's standing while I'm sitting I get this bolt of pain that comes out of yeah yeah Doc it hurts

when I do this well don't do that yeah don't do it yeah don't do it So before, this call is only about halfway through, but first thing, don't put in light bulbs like that anymore. Go to an occupational therapist, or you could just do this yourself and go get one of those robot arms and do that stuff that way. And you can even put a little mirror on it so that you're looking down instead of looking up when you do that even. But there are assistive devices that you can use because you're not going to be able to do those things until these disks resolve if they ever. do. Side of my head, the base of my skull, and goes down into the top of my shoulder. And it is the most horrific pain I've ever experienced in my life.

This can happen once a day. It can happen. God knows something. Just when you do that one thing. So if you're sitting in a chair, someone wants to talk to you, stand up or make them sit. Hey, have a seat. You don't have to make a big thing out of it. Well, if I look up, you know, I'm going to have, no, you just either stand up or just make it a natural thing.

I'm so lucky enough to have it be weeks before it happens again. Yeah. Sometimes, as it is today, which was a horrible, it's horrible today. By the way, this is why they want to do a fusion on him, so that he can't do that anymore, you know. I had a... There's other things that are done when you do a fusion, but we'll talk about it. My ears will ring. They've been ringing now for over an hour.

The pain has somewhat subsided, which is usually what happens, 15, 20, 30 seconds later. Yeah, Terry. I just, yeah, it's horrible, man. I understand the reticence in having surgery. I was on Levyland recently with Bob Levy and his crew, and I talked about how I basically, just said no to surgery until my pain went away, I'm one of the lucky ones. Discs will over time desiccate and shrink and, you know, dry out and shrink back to where they were supposed to be when they bloop out like that because now they're, they don't have

a good blood supply. And maybe we should talk about, you want to talk about why a slip disc is a problem because I sort of skipped ahead. Well, yeah, and just a couple of things. Just taking from the very top, you know. We're talking about the spine and the anatomy of the spine. Well, the biggest concern that did I hear him saying, when anybody has, when he started talking, multi-level fusions, you know, the first thing you think is, you know,

multiple disc failures. But what a lot of people don't realize is many instances, it's because of a stenosis. So there's a narrowing. A narrowing of that canal, right? And at first, I thought that's what he was describing. Then I kind of changed my tune just a teeny but because when he started talking about being positional.

Right. And then I start thinking like you, it's probably a discompression. Maybe it may be a spinalisthesis, which is a shifting of that vertebra, which is another for stability. That's why they'll do the fusions a lot. So a couple things. In Dr. Steve, perfect, there are a lot of adaptive devices in certainly physical therapy, occupational therapy, to help you to reset, you know, posturely, make sure that you're doing things appropriately. are really good suggestions. Depending on, and again, depending on which levels are affected, epidural steroid injections can be beneficial.

You've had those, certainly, yeah. Well, let's talk about that, then. I mean, that's a big target. It's a big subject we're talking about right here with this poor guy. Yeah. What I was kind of wanting to get to was the anatomy, just a basic thing. Just think of your spine as being a bunch of balsabwood blocks. Stacked on top of each other with sort of gummy-beared discs.

between them. And when you stand for 67 years upright and you're putting all that pressure on those balswood blocks because of gravity, sometimes the gummy-bear discs will just bloop out. And when they do, they allop out in a way that... Usually in a wrong way. Right. That impinges on nerve roots, coming out of the spinal column. And so the spinal column houses this nervous, you know, this network of nerves, but also gives you stability so you can stand up straight. And so as Dr. Scott said, we'll go ahead. I was going to say, and the way you're describing is perfect. But the other really super

cool thing about the spinal cord is the spinal column, those balls where blocks are in a curve. Yes. A natural curve. And there's got to be a natural curve. So if there's ever any, any insult, there's a shock absorbing component to it. So, you know, and other thing is if maybe he has an abnormal curve or lack of a curvature or something that some other therapies can do other than a fusion. I'm not saying he doesn't need a fusion, but I'm saying there's a whole lot of things that we talked about. Well, they sometimes will have to go in there and take out some of the bone to give those

nerve roots enough space to breathe. A laminectomy. That's right. And then when you do that, that makes that vertebrae unstable, and that's why you have to fuse set. And, you know, if you have to do it on both sides. If you do it on both sides, right, yeah. So, so they may be thinking about putting rods in his spine to just, they're called Harrington rods.

And, or it may be just a cage going all the way down. And I totally get that. Sure. But I would do all the things that Dr. Scott said. So let's talk about the things he can do. So occupational therapy, physical therapy. Acupuncture for sure. Sure.

There's absolutely no reason not to do that as long as you don't go to a nut, go to someone who, like Dr. Scott, who knows what they're doing and knows the limits of cranking your head around when they're sticking these needles in. And then the next thing is epidural steroid injections because those are needles that are stuck in around the spinal column, not in it, but around it. That's why they're epidural. They're around the dura, which is the lining of the spinal, you know, the spinal column where the fluid is. And they can put steroids in there. And that will induce anti-inflammatory. Shrinkets. Yeah.

And then the discs start going, the shrinkage. It's the shrinkage. Yes, that's right. And that's a good thing. It's a good thing, yeah. When I had my epidermal, I'm telling you within 12 hours, I could tell the difference. And the next day, I was, instead of crawling up the stairs, Tacey, you remember how bad it got. You know, I was bouncing around doing my thing again.

So that's important. And I do everything that you can short of having the surgery. But in the end, if you have nerve signs of nerve damage, foot drop in the lower ones, or your, you know, your hands are going numb or you can't grip or anything like that, that actually becomes a true indication for surgery. I always tell people there's two things to look for motor loss and sensory loss. If you've got either one, then I get really concerned. Yeah, then you've got to start really thinking about it. You have to consider surgery before it gets too far down the road. Yeah.

But if it's positional like this gentleman saying, it's usually a pretty good sign that we might be able to do something non-surgically. Yeah. Or at least minimal surgery. Right. You should at least try it. But do whatever your primary team tells you. We're just been crazy. We're a bunch of knuckleheads on the radio.

Right? That's right on. You don't even know if we have a Crazy people. But we love for a degree or anything, but we like to talk about it. Yes. All right.

Okay. Here's a good one. Let's see. And we'll go around the table on this one. And actually, that's to kill time because I forgot to Google the answer. Are you ready? Hey, I've got a strange little question for you.

Oh, no. What bone in the human body is fractured or broken the most? That's why? It's one of those weird things you wake up at three in the morning and wonder. See about. Take day. Are we going to guess? Are we all going to guess?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do know the answer, and it surprised me, to be honest with you, because what I thought it was going to be was something completely different. So, okay, Scott, what do you think? Gosh, fifth metacarpal. That's interesting. Okay, so tell people what that is. And why that's my guess.

So with the bone on the outside of your hand, it's the fifth bone in your hand, it's the fifth bone in your hand, going to your pinky, a lot of, a lot of people will break. It's in the palm, right? It's the very edge of the palm, you know, the, right, the long bone in your hand that goes to your pinky. Okay, so go ahead. It goes from your wrist to your pinky. Yeah, I'm sorry. And I, okay.

But people, you have a lot of times when they punch things will punch incorrectly. and one of punching this thing at a boxer's fracture, a puncher's fracture, and break that bone. We used to call it the fool's fracture, because only a fool punches that way. So, okay, so Tacey, what do you think it is? Pinky toe. Pinky toe. Perhaps undiagnosed, actually. It may not actually have factored into this.

That's true. So this would be the most diagnosed one. Because you can't really do anything with it, right? So people just don't go. Yeah. Okay, what do you think? I have to withdraw myself because I know the answer. answer. Oh, you do? Yeah. Why do you know?

Because I looked it up. Oh, you looked it up while we were talking? Yes. Okay. I didn't know this was going to be a game. Okay, what would you have said? I didn't get that far. Okay, what I would have said was one of the metatarsal bones, which are the long bones of the foot. And my reasoning for that is, you know, you see stress

fractures, all this kind of stuff all the time, is because you put 100 and, you know, in my case, 170 pounds of weight on those up to 10,000 times a day when you're walking. You know?

And why don't those break all the time? But that wasn't the right answer. So, Lydia, what's the answer? Clavicle. Yes, that's correct. No, it's done. Give yourself a bill. And it's because kids.

Kids break their clavicles. They're clumsy and they fall and my niece Holly broke her clavicle. When I was in primary care, I did some pediatrics and we were treating clavicular fractures all the time. So once I saw that,

it was like, yes, of course. My dupist nephew, who I love dearly, broke to crap out of his classical snowboarding. He hung the front edge, faceplanted, pow. Yeah. He had to have surgery for his.

He's got plate and screws. Yeah. Every source I looked at said the same thing. So it's the most common sight for a fracture in children. Clavicle fractures happen to infants during birth as they passed through the birth canal. Clavicle fractures can also happen from falling with your arm.

It stretched or from a direct hit, which happens most commonly during contact sports. I broke mine. I got hit by a car. I was riding a bicycle. There you go. I broke my clavicle. I was like, surely my entire armor shattered, but it was just a small clavicular fracture. I ever tell you guys the story of my last delivery that I did?

Have I ever told that on here? I think I can tell that. It was 40 years ago. No? Okay. I don't know if I've got time to tell it. Now. Oh, buggers.

But yeah, it was terrifying. It was the last delivery for a reason. I was third year resident. I was almost done anyway, but it was somebody I had followed for a long time. And got the head out and couldn't get the shoulder out. It's called a shoulder dystopia. And so I said, okay, I don't want to do the main maneuver for getting this kid out, this sort of screw thing. I'm just going to put downward pressure on the kid's head because the shoulder was right there.

there. Can I get it out that way? So I was putting downward pressure on the kid's head with just a vagina and a head sticking out. And I hear this crack and the kid comes blooping out, right? So I'm like, oh my God. Oh my God. What have I done? And so I hand the baby off because now I've got to attend to the mom, right? And I said, check that baby. And I was sweating bullets. Totally fine. Totally fine. Baby, totally fine. Check the mom. Totally fine. Do you hurt here? Do you hurt there? No, the kid's clavicle, okay, yep, moving all four extremities, totally fine. I said, never again. That's it.

I am done with this shit. I'm never delivering a baby as long as I live. And I have held up to that promise. Good job. Jeez. If you see someone delivering on the side of the road, just passing by. You don't have the duty. I know.

All right, Dr. Scott, you got any questions from the waiting room? The waiting room, we do. We have a great question. So Scott's got a question about. He just started an antidepressant for anxiety and depression. Yep. And he's had a couple of the initial side effects, which he tolerated really well, and they fade away. He said, now he's got a little bit of an erectile dysfunction disorder.

He said he has no trouble getting the erection. It's completing the transaction. Yes. He has delayed ejaculation. He has delayed ejection. That's very common. Holy cow. He says, sometimes it takes an hour and a half.

Yeah. Oh, who got time of that? Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. I got no time of that. Yeah, that's like normal. Oh, my God. Tacey hates that, too.

So we've had to make some adjustments over the years. But, yeah, that's... In and out. Yeah, let's get it over with. Let's get this done. Because she's married to an old man, and who wants to have an old man on top of you? That's not it. It's just in and out. Get it over with.

Yeah, I got laundry to do. Come on, hurry up. So, yeah. Yeah, so there's an interesting solution that might work for him. Okay. One of the things you can do, of course, is change antidepressants. Yes. Because SSRIs are known to do this.

But then you're on another antidepressant for eight days. He's already gotten through most of the adverse effects. Got to start all over again. You could add another antidepressant called wellbutron or bupropropotron. or bupropion, which is more works on the dopamine receptor axis and may reverse some of the adverse sexual effects of an SSRI type antidepressant. When we say SSRI, we're talking Prozac, Zoloft, you know, that kind of stuff. He's on Lix, pro.

So he's on an SNRI. So those can still have it. Slightly different. So SNRI just stands for serotonin, norapinephrine reuptake inhibitor. So they are more like the old classic antidepressants like amytryptylene and nortyptylene, which also elevated levels of serotonin norepine in the brain, which are just neurotransmitters. They're just chemicals that signal between nerve endings in the brain. So you could do that

But the thing that I find the most interesting Is taking a non-drowsy antihistamine 30 minutes before intercourse Or maybe even an hour So you could take a Phyxophenidine What's the other one? La Radidine? That is clareton

That's the one that I saw most of the research on Is taking a clareton About an hour before now You have to schedule it then That's the thing but they try it and well do your own research but if you think that it's something you want to try you could try it and then report back to us I mean it's over-the-counter I don't mind recommending over-the-counter things to people they want to just try something so that's an interesting

solution to that we've had some people who've tried it on this show that have gotten good results and it's that's way counterintuitive yeah that doesn't make sense at all but yeah Well, let's say give it a shot. All right, because I'd rather do that if that works than they have to just start all over it. Yeah, start a new medication. Yeah, well, good luck, Scott. And the other thing, oh, the other thing, Scott.

Give it, get dried out there, buddy. Stop beating off, too, so that you've got... You need, in there music for this? Oh. Hmm. Stop beating off. There we go. Sean is actually looking forward to hearing that.

All right. So, but don't masturbate if you're worried about completing the transaction with your partner because that, if you're right on the borderline of being able to complete the transaction, that'll kick you over the cliff and it'll be much harder. So you want to have a full batch as one of our friends on the Internet likes to say. All right. God. So disgusting.

Anyway, all right. Anything else for anybody? Yeah, that's a good question. That's a great question. These are the ones we can table until next week. Antidepressants are interesting. We just sort of did biopsies on brains and realized that people with depression had low serotonin levels. So that's how they came up with it.

So we just dump buckets of serotonin in there and hope that's going to do something. And, you know, sometimes they work, they're amazing. And then other times, not so much. So we need to get a better sort of more precise idea of what we're dealing with. But as we've said multiple times, we don't know how consciousness works. So when it breaks, it's really hard to fix it. Just imagine Tasey trying to fix a, and this is no, lies on you, Daisy. I'm just trying to think of something that you don't have any experience with,

you know, an internal combustion engine. You know, it would be very difficult to do. Drive it to the dealership. Right, right. I haven't told it to the dealership. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it'll even be better. So that's how we, we kind of are with brain, you know, conscious disorders of consciousness. Well, we don't know what the hell we're doing. Ketamine, very interesting, though. You know, And ketamine for depression, particularly major refractory depression that might otherwise go to electroshock therapy or something like that, has been shown to be a pretty damn effective. Matter of fact, it's on the market now. But you can get compounded ketamine as well, and every state's different. So you've got to check it with your prescriber and see if it's even legal in your state to do that.

but we're making some progress the consciousness is the final frontier we made some pretty good steps with oncology which was the final frontier but the nervous system is really going to be the thing where we're going to make the final strides and in future medicine all right cool all right well listen thanks always go to dr scott thanks tacy thanks pa lydia and we will continue your implant journey with you, and we really appreciate you taking us with you on that journey. Thanks, everyone who's made this show happen over the years and listen to our Cirrus XM show on the Faction Talk Channel.

CIRSXM Channel 103, Saturdays at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at, I think, 10 p.m. Eastern now 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, 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. Remember GVag. Thank you.