Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 534 - Syphilis is Bad

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

Dr Steve and Dr Scott discuss: Vic Henley was funny Tachyphylaxis vs tolerance Cancer in the ICU Pre-marriage bloodwork The Three Phases of Syphilis Death from Sneezing Chronic cough Rejecting metal foreign bodies Transplant anti-rejection Regeneration of human body parts getting recognized at work herpes and cold sores Please visit: stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) simplyherbals.net  (now with NO !vermect!n!) (JUST KIDDING, Podcast app overlords! Sheesh!) roadie.doctorsteve.com (the greatest gift for a guitarist or bassist! The robotic tuner!) Also don't forget: Cameo.com/weirdmedicine (Book your old pal right now while he’s still cheap! "FLUID!") noom.doctorsteve.com (the link still works! Lose weight now before swimsuit season is over!) Most importantly! CHECK US OUT ON PATREON!  ALL NEW CONTENT! Robert Kelly, Mark Normand, the O&A Troika, Joe DeRosa, Pete Davidson. Stuff you will never hear on the main show ;-) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's the best place in the house to hide from ghosts? The living room. 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? You give me the respect that I'm entitled to! I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus.

I've got Toboliv I'm stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my incredible woes. I want to take my brain out and blast with the wave, an ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsating shave. I want 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. Dr. Steve. No, he'll take a careful. From the world famous Cardiff Electric Network Studios, it's weird medicine,

the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio. Now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve. My little pal, Dr. Scott, the traditional Chinese medical practitioner, gives me street cred with whack alternative medicine assholes. Hello, Dr. Scott.

Hey, Doug Steve. And this is a shout out to Amanda. No, cold temperature doesn't cause colds. Viruses and bacteria cause colds and pneumonia, not cold temperature. But you may be more susceptible to it during cold weather. So a little fun fact, keep people listening to the intro. This is show for people who never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. I guess it was Amy that asked that.

If you have a question, you're embarrassed to take the regular medical provider. If you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call. 47-76-6-6-4-3-23. That's 347. Poo-Hood. Visit our website at Dr. Steve.com for podcast, medical news and stuff you can buy. Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt.

Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking it over with your health care provider. Don't forget stuff. Dot, Dr. Steve.com, stuff. dot, Dr. Steve.com for all your shopping needs. You've got a guitar player in your family. Go to stuff. Dottersteve.com. Scroll down, buy them a Rodey

robotic guitar tuner. Do it now. If you don't want to go to stuff. Dottersteve.com, go to Rodey, R-O-A-D-I-E dot Dr. Steve.com and buy them one today. It's the greatest gift you'll ever give them. And it's done costing arm and leg.

And check out Dr. Scott's website at simply herbals. And check us out at patreon.com slash weird medicine. That's Tacey and me and some celebrities sometimes. We're supposed to have Gino Bisconti soon. Joe List is on the list. Kevin Brennan's on the list. I'd like to have Rich and Bonnie.

Sometimes I might have to have them on separately for lots of different reasons. But the main one, so I don't lose control of the show as I did the last time we did the three of us a show together. go back and listen to their episode called Personality Test, I think it's called, or compatibility test, I think it was. And I did a Myers-Briggs personality assessment on the two of them. Oh, goodness. And it was interesting. One of them was ISTJ and the other one was ISTP.

So they were exactly the same except for the last letter, but that meant, made all the difference. What that meant was if Bonnie is, you know, getting ready for a trip, the two of them are getting ready for a trip, and ISTP will just throw stuff in there, you know, just throw stuff in the suitcase, and then go, hey, if we get there and I forgot something, I'll buy it when I get there. Whereas the ISTJ has all their little packing cubes and they've got the X number of underwear and all this stuff, all in a row, all imperfect. And the ISTJ, which are the, you know, the J stands for judgment and the P stands for perception, they will criticize the other one for not doing it the way they do it.

And so that was very real. But that was a fun one. It's several years ago. And at the spoiler alert, at the very end of it, I just started playing an old song called, You have to accentuate the positive to finish up. Because I couldn't get them to stop. I just said, well, let's just end it that way. So anyway, all right, very good.

And then cameo. It's time for holiday cameos. Cameo.com slash weird medicine. I'll say, what up to your mama at the holidays for a very little amount of money. And what is hilarious is I try to get Tom, the comedian, Tom Myers, to do a couple for me. and he reported me to cameo saying that I was a troll impersonating a well-known radio personality. So he thought it was some person impersonating me trying to get him to goof on people. I was just as me trying to get him to goof on people.

And his thing's $60. I bought two of them. I figured he'd be excited for $120 to go out and take his chick out to dinner or something. But no, he would rather just not accept the money. But anyway, okay, Tom. It was actually me, and I'm sorry that that didn't work out. Don't forget Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. That's simplyerbils.net.

Did you bring that little bottle up with you? Yes, you did. So a friend of mine turned me on to this stuff, and this is not an advertisement for them. It is, I can't even read the damn name. Okay, magic mind it's called. And this is an herbal supplement that you can buy, and this stuff was fabulously expensive. And do you still have the ingredients up there, Dr. Scott? The reason I bring it up is it says do more stress less.

Do you not have stress less trademark? Well, no. Okay, so. I'm all about doing more. You got in trouble with one of the things that you said. Yeah, some, some, some, was it stressless or was it fatigue? It was stressless. Yeah, some doofus in Atlanta was, so he had it trademarked and, and of course, allegedly

a doofus. No, he's a doofus. I said it. If he heard, I hope he is it. Okay. But no, they're, and hell, there's 70 different stress list. There's a stressless sleeper or a stressless recliner and. Yeah, I guess it, it is context driven.

My understanding is trademark. you can't trademark something blanket it has to be with the context. Right. So you can't say, well, I have this thing called stress less and no one else can use it for anything else. Yeah, no one else can never use that term. Yeah, intellectual property and trademarking and all that stuff, patent stuff. It's all pretty tricky. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that's why those guys that do it for a living, I think, make a pretty good, a pretty good chunk of change doing it for. Yeah, well, I'm going to check out this magic mind stuff. But, you know, I think maybe you ought to amp up your marketing a little bit. I can. I mean, for real. Doing more marketing on the weird medicine show. It's my favorite show.

On the podcast part, right? It's my favorite show. The most famous show on the... Evidently, it's the most, it's the second most favorite famous on the world. Right, with the Cardiff Electric podcast being number one. All right. Well, check out Dr. Scott at simplyherbils.net. Simplyherbils.net.

I see no one has put a copyright strike on. you for a trademark strike on you for fatigue reprieve. No. How bizarre is that? It's not as cool of a name. No, it's, but it rhymes. There you go. It makes it damn good.

All right. Yes, it does. We've got a great bunch of folks with us today. Well, that's because we're recording on Saturday now. So if you want to hang out with us while we record this, you know, early termination. of a pregnancy of a show, check us out at around 1 o'clock on Saturdays, on YouTube. Just, you know, go to our YouTube channel and subscribe and like and turn on the notifications.

And when we go live, you can come in and hang out with us. We've got a good group in there. And they have to listen to our shite music at the end of the show and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, it's fun. But it's fun, though. Oh, yeah, it's a lot of fun. Well, very good. Number one thing.

Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio Boy, ain't that the truth So I've got a couple of voicemails here And you've got some topics and stuff too Yeah, we've got a couple of them here Yeah, that's what I heard And Tacey's in Las Vegas So I don't feel sorry for her

No And yep She's probably still in bed right now as we speak No, I just talked to her Yeah, they got up They went and saw Ron White last night Oh my gosh And apparently he is retiring

And but yeah You know, it made me kind of sad because Vic Henley was a friend of ours. And, you know, there's a cadre of people that say Vic Hanley wasn't funny. I disagree. Whether you liked him on the OPI radio show or not, that's here nor there. I saw him absolutely destroy an audience of 250, you know, 300 people at Allendale, you know, one of the are the Allendale comedy events that we put on.

And it was in a barn, which was apropos. Yes. And, you know, it was a bunch of people from Upper East Tennessee. So it was his audience, but he destroyed in that audience. And he was such a nice guy, too. Vic Henley was a very nice person. He got stuck in Atlanta, and apparently he couldn't upgrade his ticket because I had bought his ticket with Miles

and there were some restrictions and stuff and it's like, dude, I'll fix it whatever you want. He missed two gigs. We would have them come in on Thursday so they could do their gigs on Friday and Saturday. He missed all his Friday and Saturday gigs. Oh, goodness. I sent him a

check for, I can't remember, $750,000 just to, you know, make up for some of that. I have no idea how much he was making in New York at the time. And he sent me back an email, you know, you son of a bitch, I'm not taking your money. And he gave it to, you know, some veterans charity, which I thought was really cool. I mean, he was a cool guy,

really nice. And it was, we all figured Ron White would be the first to go. And he's still going at it. And, you know, poor old Vic is no longer with us. So, but anyway, but yeah, a good guy still greatly missed. And he, he's well regarded. Upper East Tennessee. You know who else is, is Tim Dillon. They loved him here. We got Tim back before he was Tim Dillon. He was, you know, nobody'd ever heard of him.

We got him for 1,500 bucks plus expenses, you know, plus travel and expenses. And he totally destroyed that audience, too. So, you know, we've got a good population for comedy here because they really are just sort of star for comedy, to be honest with you. Yeah, I think we only have one or two local. Well, we never had, we didn't have any. Yeah, I know we hadn't, we had none for years. And that's why we started ETNComody.com and we did a few sort of big, larger events,

mainly just as a proof of concept. And now we've got a couple of comedy clubs. They're all in Bristol, right around the, or Bristol, Virginia, where the casino is. But still, it's something. So Virginia now has a casino and marijuana. Yeah. And we got nothing. Nope.

Nope. Tennessee's a little slow on a drop. We got whiskey. We do have some Tennessee whiskey. We got, we got corn squeezing, don't you know? Hey, by the way, we've got to stop the show for two seconds. It is Amy's birthday. Amy.

Oh, Amy. Talk like a Hick to you. Let's see here. It's a happy birthday, Amy. Let me, I'm here. You get nothing. You lose. Oh, there you go.

Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-oh. Oh, wrong one. No one. Anyway, all right. Happy birthday to Amy in the waiting room, which is. All right.

What else we got? You want to do your, well, let's do some of these questions, and then we'll do that. It'll be great. There we go. All right. Let's see what we got here. This is on tolerance. Hey, Dr. Steve.

Yeah. Randy from Austin. Hey. That's a very weird question to ask, of course. Cool. Basically, I've been having a theory that I believe that if you are constantly taking medicine, that the effectiveness of medicine tends to warn off. Now, personally, if I don't have to take any kind of medication whatsoever,

I try not to, of course, with the occasional, you know, flu, cold, or sore back, you know, a painkiller here, night quill day queer here and there and such. But I wanted to know, if someone is constantly taking medicine, does the effect of medicine loses its poteness over time, or is it just that you're kind of getting more... I think you made up a word there, buddy, but I know what you're... That's basically what the question is. Does taking medicine constantly over time loses its potency in the human body? Thank you.

Good question. Yeah, and it is a good question. And the answer is it depends. It depends on the medication. So there is a thing called tachyphylaxis. Tachyphylaxis is where a medication rapidly loses its effectiveness in the, you know, after continued use. There's also tolerance. So if I give someone an opioid, let's say I give them five milligrams of oxycodone every four hours for their

pain after some amount of time, they may require 10 milligrams to get the same effect, and then 30 milligrams, and then 80 milligrams, et cetera, et cetera, and that's called tolerance. And there is a thing called upregulation, too, and that may be related to tolerance, where if I block a receptor that the body uses, for example, an acetyl colon estuase receptor, if I block lock that receptor, the body will go, well, wait a minute, I need those receptors, so it will make new ones. And then the medication becomes less effective because now you've got all these receptors. You know, maybe you start off with a hundred, let's say, multiply that times, you know, a million. And now you've got a thousand of them.

So you need that much more medication to cover those receptors to do the thing that you're trying to do. Right. there's desensitization, too. Sure. That's where there's a biological response to a drug diminishes when it's given continuously or repeatedly. And it may be possible to get the response back by either increasing the dose of the drug, or in some cases that tissues become completely refractory to that effect. And then, as I said, tachyphylaxis is used to describe desensitization that occurs

very rapidly, sometimes even with the initial dose. So an example of a drug like that could be an H2 blocker. Okay. Like Fomodidine, those are felt to have, in some people, tackyflaxis in that when you take them to suppress acid in the stomach, they'll work really well the first couple of times then they drop off. But I can think of counter examples. Marijuana. Most people will tell you that the first time they tried pot it didn't do anything.

it was the second or third time, all of a sudden it kicked their ass. Now, I don't know if that's a myth or not, but that's a case where you become sensitized to something. You got any other examples? I was thinking another example would be something like testosterone and even some thyroid medications, if you take them for long enough, your body stops producing, like testosterone for sure. Yes.

You take testosterone long enough as a supplement. Oh, that's a good one. And your body says, wait a minute, you've got plenty of it. Well, let's just stop making testosterone. So you have to continue to take it. That's a whole different animal. Opposite of upregulation. That's actually downregulation of the thing that the body was making.

So, yeah, you would need more up to a point. There is a phenomenon where you deplete the chemicals that are necessary for the pharmacological actions of the drug. So let's say you have a certain number of neurotransmitters. transmitters, and then you deplete those. And once you deplete those, then you can keep going up and up and up on the drug, and it won't work anymore. I'm thinking of maybe capsaicin would be one where that is the molecule that causes red peppers to be hot. And if you put that on the skin, it'll burn. in the first few times

but if you keep putting it on it won't burn anymore and as a matter of fact if you had pain in that area where you're putting it where you're putting the capsaic on

it'll actually stop hurting yeah in a lot of cases so you can harness this effect to your benefit go ahead well which is just completely counterintuitive because sometimes

we'll tell people to put it on on something that hurts and why would you want to put something that burns on something that hurts because you're depleting that neurotransmitter

that sends the pain fiber to the brain. It's counterintuitive, but it does work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of crazy. So I'm looking here at an article to see if there are anything's, you know, drug resistance is a term that we reserve to describe the loss of effectiveness of, say, a, of an antibiotic. But that's because the organisms actually figure out a way around it.

You know, penicillin used to kill almost all bacteria that it came in. contact with, and now it kills very few. And that's because the bacteria have learned, you know, when you get one that figures out, hey, I can, you know, phosphorylate one, you know, part of this molecule, or I can close this receptor, or I can do, you know, I can change the way that I metabolize, you know, certain aspects of my environment. and now the stupid antibiotic just bounces off of me, these fucking things will send out little pieces of DNA

so that other bacteria can pick it up and learn how to become resistant to it. And also, just think of it this way. If you, let's say you have a group of bacteria and there's just a billion of them, you've got a billion of them. That's a very small number for a bunch of bacteria, but you've got a billion bacteria. And a hundred of them are resistant to a drug.

And you throw the drug on there. You kill all but a hundred, right? So it seemed to us, they're all gone. Yeah. But that hundred now can reproduce at will because there's no competition for them anymore. And now they'll reproduce like crazy. And now when you get a billion of those bacteria back, they'll all be resistant to the drug. Yeah.

This happens with cancer, chemoher. too. They're a small cell lung cancer, good example of that, where you kill it the first time with your chemotherapy, and then when it comes back, it's the cells that you didn't kill the first time that come back, and now they're resistant to what you threw at them because they didn't die the first time. Yeah. Is it like CLL, like chronic lymphosic leukemia like that, or lymphoma, one of those two?

So lymphomas can be like that sometimes. Lymphomas, that's what it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll go away really fast. They can go away, but then they tend to come back and... Well, sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes.

With lymphoma, sometimes you can just kill everything. Okay. They've gotten better and better at treating lymphoma. Cool. But there's two kinds of cancer that you can treat in the ICU. You know, most of the time, they want you to be able to walk into the chemotherapy suite because when you give someone chemotherapy, it takes someone that's at, you know, at a high level of functioning

and we'll drop their level of functioning down. So if you bring somebody that's in a low level of functioning and drop that down, you can do them in. So they'll require usually a certain level of functioning before they can just give you the high potency chemotherapy agents. But small cell lung cancer and lymphoma are exceptions to that because you can sometimes treat those people with one dose of chemotherapy and then it will just dissolve.

and now you have to keep treating them to try to get all the cells that you can possibly get and keep it away as long as you can. But they will do that. Now, do I recommend someone on the ventilator being treated with chemotherapy? No, I don't recommend it, but it can be done. That's one time you can do it. And as a matter of fact, they will kill so many cancer cells at once that the body has a hard time processing it.

can cause gout. Oh, good. And it can cause a thing called tumor lysis syndrome where you've killed so much dead, you know, tissue, human tissue in the human body that the body can't handle it. Wow. You know. How do you get rid of that? Well, yep, they end up in the hospital.

A lot of times you give them fluids to flush out the kidneys. That kind of stuff. You give them medication to prevent gout crystals from forming and stuff. Don't use the G word, my presence, please. But anyway, so now there are, back to his question, there are other drugs that you can just take on and on and on forever and they do just fine. Example, like a blood pressure medication, I would think, for the most part, those tend to be pretty stable over time. Yeah, and if your blood pressure does tend to increase over time, it's usually not because the blood pressure medicine is failing. It's because your genetic predisposition to high blood pressure is progressing.

Yeah. Or there's some other things that need to be looked into a little deeper. But it's a dynamic process, and there are reasons for all of these things. You know, why do people get more and more resistant to insulin? It's because insulin half the time is the problem. And when you get these spikes of insulin, the blood sugar drops low, and the body really hates low blood sugar situations. So it'll start to dial down the sensitivity of the,

of the body's response to insulin. It's just like if someone's shouting in your ear, you're going to turn down your hearing aid, and then you keep turning it down as they get louder and louder because you can't hear them, and you keep turning it down, and they keep yelling louder, and then eventually you can't hear anything,

no matter how loud they shout. And just think of insulin as being the person that's shouting, and the body's response to insulin as being the hearing aid. My great grandmother, you could tell when she was tired of listening to you. And she just reached up and she's reached out, put her shirt pocket. I've got a quick, I've got a quick, you damn kids. Shut up, kids. I've got a quick question for, from Bonafide, Lloyd Bonafide.

So he had a co-worker last week, had something grow on the ball of her foot. She thought it was a warrant, went to urgent care, turned out to be an infection, they drained it. And so the question was, how does she get an infection in the ball of her foot? There were no cuts or anything. Right. But here's the clue. Diabetes. She wore some weird shoes.

Oh, yeah. What'd she wear? I don't know. He just said she wore some different shoes. So I've got a guess. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, go. Because mine is just really a guess.

Yeah, well, I was going to say, you know what I think she probably did. If she wore some weird, weird shoes, put some weird pressure on her foot, she may have developed like a bursitis. Yeah, I was thinking about a callus. Yeah, yeah. Will if it is a callus They might not drain it though But it was a pretty nasty bursitis Oh I want to drain it

Oh I see what you're saying You know like if you fall and hit your your elbow Olokranon Oh god You're a lacronin Yes Yes Your olokranan

And your olokranon burst But that happens a lot We see that in a lot of elbows Yeah Sometimes wrist A lot of joints When there's trauma to that joint That might have been what happened to her foot

Huh. Now, that's my guess. No, we didn't see it, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that would make sense to me, especially if it was that acute. You know, you can get traumas to the bursa and the knee and get like what we call it pre-petala bursitis. Yep. It can be due to a trauma and actually draw that out, that fluid out of the area.

Yeah, that'd be in the knee, right? Yeah. Yeah, toe joints do have bursas, and they can get bursitis, so that may be what it was. Yeah, makes sense. That's the ball of the foot. Yeah. Yeah, it could be. Could be.

I a lot of times would see people who were diabetic and had a big callus on the bottom of their foot that would become infected. And you go, well, how did this happen? There wasn't a cut, not that we knew of. That you could see. And there may have been something stuck in there that they just didn't see and they just trained us. Yeah. But at least there's an alternate answer for you there. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm looking here. How do you treat Bercitis in the big toe? Rest, ice, elevation, stretching. Yeah. footwear? No, that's a terrible idea. Put on chakos, brother. Chacos will do it. What the hell is a chaco? A chaco will take the pressure off the toes and arch of the foot.

How do you spell that? Just like a taco bit with the CH. Those are the shoes I wear. Best shoes ever. Oh, okay. Those are those negative heel things. How in the hell is that going to help a bursitis in your toe? It takes most of the load off your toes.

It's basically at rest. Oh, really? You know, when you're walking, it's normal, but at rest, it takes all the load off your toes. Huh. Okay. Well, so says Dr. Scott. There you go. Science-based relation here.

No, what stuff it is. Jesus. All right. All right. Hi, guys and girls. Hello? Just wondering, 39 years ago, I had to take a blood test to get a marriage license. And I don't know if they still do that or not.

But what was it they were looking for and what would have showed up that they would have said, sorry, you can't get married? Just curious, thanks. Yeah, I know exactly what they were looking for. They were looking for syphilis. Oh, that is absolutely true. Now, almost every state in the United States has dropped any blood test requirements before getting married. There is a partial exception, which is New York. York, which requires that people of African and Hispanic descent get blood test for sickle cell

anemia. That law allows religious exemptions, and apparently the results won't affect your ability to get married. So you have to have the test, but you can't, but you can still get married. And so states sometimes require applicants read a brochure that includes information about inherited and sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV and how to get tests for those diseases. So there you go. So that's what that was for the most part. It was back in the day they were looking for syphilis just to make sure that you weren't infecting somebody.

because syphilis was a horrendous disease before we developed treatment for it. Oh, gosh, yeah. And one of the main reasons for monogamy and for not having intercourse before marriage. There you go. Because syphilis was bad. It related to Lyme disease in the sense that they're both spirochetes, the molecule is sort of a twisty-turny-looking thing. All right, the molecule, the bacterium.

And they have three phases. Think of Lyme disease. You have a rash, and then you have a latent phase where it goes away, and then you have this tertiary phase where it comes back and efts you up. Pretty good. In the case of Lyme disease, you can affect the heart and the joints and stuff. Now, with syphilis, you have a rash. You have a shanker that divides and divides.

Again, it's usually painless. And then you would have a latent phase, and then the turfellus. And then the tertiary phase, it can affect the cartilage of the face. So your face just kind of falls off and or it would invade the brain and calls neurocephalus and make you crazy. So there you go. But that's what, yeah, that's what they were looking for. And that is no longer the case. I think I had, I know, I remember when I got married the first time, I had to get.

get a physical exam. Okay. And I remember the guy checked, I'm in 19 or 20 something years old, and he's doing a prostate exam on me. It's like, was this really necessary? Oh, geez. Yeah, he thought it was. All right.

How about this one? Dr. Steve, Dr. Scott. What's up? Hey, can excessive sneezing from allergies or coughing from something too much cause any minor brain damage? Love you guys. Love the show. Well, we love you back.

Yeah, I love you too, man. No HMO. Only private insurance. That's a joke. Okay, sorry. That's terrible. Thank you. Okay, so, yeah, it's not true that your heart stops beating when you sneeze.

But it is rare that if you go on the Internet, it'll say, no, you cannot die. a sneeze. You cannot die from a sneeze. People have died from sneezing, but it is extremely rare. I'm looking in the UK. Here's a teenager sneezes to death. Mother's despair after 17-year-old son suffers a brain hemorrhage following a sneezing fit. And this was the example I was going to give, so I was very sad to see this, but glad that, you know, that we can talk about this little bit. If you have an aneurysm in your brain and you sneeze, it is possible that that thing could cut loose, but this is not a reason not to sneeze or to hold your sneezes in

because it's unbelievably rare for this to happen. But this is a tragic story. A teenager collapsed and died from a brain hemorrhage after having a sneezing fit. The kid had a seizure at his home in Stockton on Tees after. sneezing six times in quick succession. And I'm going to assume that he had a congenital abnormality in the brain. I don't, this is a very long article, but I'm going to assume that. So there are some, you know, if you have a predisposition for an aneurysm and you sneeze and it triggers it.

Yeah, but if it was on the borderline like that, it was going to happen anyway, no matter what you did. So the main thing is, is if you have symptoms of a neurologic nature, particularly involving the face where you feel, oh, all of a sudden, half of my face has gone numb, or if you have the worst thunderclap headache you've ever had in your life, don't ignore that. Go get it checked. Yes. And most of the time, it'll still be nothing. But every once in a while, they'll pick up on something they can save your life. This is one of those things where Western medicine can really help you. Oh, gosh, yeah, yeah, far superior, first fair.

Hey, Amanda's got a good question. What about, like, holding your nose or pinching off a sneeze, good or bad? Yeah, I'm not a fan of that. It's there to protect you. There's a sneeze. Right, that's right. There's a sneeze reflex for a reason. And people who hold it are, you know, they're preventing that reason, which is there's some antigen in your nose.

and the body's trying to just blow it out forcefully. And, you know, sneezing may help prevent you from getting ill by, you know, by expelling the things that are getting into your nose helps reset the settings of your nose back to normal. But, you know, when you're speaking to someone else, you kind of want to hold in the sneeze or whatever. But you can just turn sideways and put your nose. in your elbow. Most people are aware that sneezing is a thing and they're not going to be

horrified by it. So there was a 2016 study where scientists measured a pressure level of one pound force per square inch in the windpipe of a woman who was sneezing. And when they were exhaling hard during strenuous activity, it was only like 0.03 PSI. So holding in the Sneeze greatly increases the pressure inside the respiratory system to about five to 24 times that caused by the sneeze itself. And you just never know. So, you know, again, if you've got a really robust healthy body, it's probably not hurting anything. But if there's anything in there that's slightly on the borderline, then, yeah, I could push you over the edge. So, and I've, I've actually seen somebody rupture their eardrum holding in a sneeze.

Oh, gosh. I've ruptured my eardrum before, and that's, and that is, that hurts. That's some painful shit, man. Here's one. According to experts, uh-oh. Uh-oh. The pressure caused by holding in a sneeze can potentially lead to the rupturing of a brain aneurysm. Well, we just talked about the sneeze actually doing that.

And then, yeah, there's a life-threatening. Injury. I'm not even going to read that one because that one's bullshit. Doctors have found one case of a person rupturing the back of their throat by holding in a sneeze. So it's one case out of billions of people, so not too worried about that. But anyway, so I think the risk of holding in a sneeze is pretty low, just as the risk of sneezing is really low. But what would be the point of doing it? you know, when we have mechanisms now for sneezing and coughing in public that are acceptable.

But you know, the only people you ever see holding in their cities are females. Yeah. I think it's because they're delicate in there. They're sweet and they're soft. Well, they hold in their fletus too and guys just kind of let a rip. Or try to make a silent, but deadly one, you know. Yes, I believe there's some gender inequities there, I would believe. Let a rip.

I've been in my office before where I, I've just, you know, had what? I've drunk too much kombucha or something. And I've got gas. You're drinking Cabochdale, stop it. Yeah, I know. That's enough. No, it just really doesn't gas me up.

But it's something, whatever it is. And, you know, you let out this silent, but, you know, really horrendously smelly, flayed us. And then you're just praying nobody comes in there. And then here comes my program coordinator. Can you sign these things? It's like, yeah, give them to me. I'll bring them to you. get the fuck out of it i love it i love it if you're sneezing a lot there's something in your nose that's

irritating it you get you a navage or just get some simply saline or or some dr scott simply herbal nasal spray that's right and get that nose cleaned out you get the original or the CBD there you go yes you can it's simply herbals dot net but you can you can you can this stuff up there, let it sit there for a minute, and then just blow it back out again. A lot of times that'll take care of it. All right. Yeah.

Okay, excellent question. All right. Hey, Dr. Steve, it's Mike from New York. Hey, Mike. I have a blockage in my heart. On the left side, the artery, I guess, is 100% blocked. Oh.

Center 75 and the right 35%. Goodness. Mike. For a while, I get a little discomfort in my chest, but it's always on the right side of my chest, farthest away from the blockages. Never much, thank God.

But is there a medical reason why on the opposite side of the chest where I feel a little discomfort at times, or what's the deal? Thanks, water. Have a good day. Yeah. Well, so Mike's got a bunch of blockages and it's hard. Pretty serious stuff.

but all of the discomfort he has on the right side of his chest and you always hear about pain being on the left side of your chest when you have heart pain. Now angina or angina can be, you know, mask itself as lots of things. I've told the story about the guy when I was in medical school that died because when he came in, he said he had a sore throat. Oh, gosh. What he was really trying to describe to them was that he was having left-sided chest pain that radiated to his neck, or maybe he just had it in his neck.

When my dad had angina, he ignored it because it was just shoulder pain. And he was on us. My brother, who was his doctor, put him on a treadmill, and when the treadmill started showing it. you know, issues of decreased blood flow to the heart, my brother said, are you having any symptoms? He said, no, just my shoulder's hurting. And it turned out that was what, how angina was experienced by him. So this whole textbook thing of, you know, people having a heart attack have sweating, palpitations, nausea, left-sided chest pain that radiates to the left arm. That's textbook presentation. A lot of people do present that way. But

There's a whole bunch of people that don't. So, but stuff on the right side of the chest is a little bit weird for angina. That can be acid reflux. It can be musculoskeletal stuff in the right side of the chest. It's, you know, the question is, does it come on with activity and then go away with rest? And if it does, then that's the real hallmark for angina or heart pain. is that when you're running up three flights of stairs, does it come on? And then after you've calmed down a little bit, does it go away?

And if that's reproducible, that may be a sign that your heart isn't getting enough blood and therefore time to get checked again. But with that many stents and blockages, I'm assuming, Mike, is being seen frequently by his cardiologists. Yeah, I would think so. Yeah, I hope so anyway. You got anything on that one? Maybe he's got, what is it?

Citus inversus inversus, yeah. Surely to God they would know that. On the wrong side, I flipped over. Yeah, there are people. Inverses, yeah. Is the cytos inverses or situs? Cytus. Okay, cytos.

Cetus. Cetus and versus. That's what I was thinking is rare. But, you know, the other thing is. Well, let's tell people what that is. That is a defect in the cells that make, that are embryologically. going to form the organs where they don't migrate the way they're supposed to, and they will end up having the heart on the right side of the body and the spleen on the right side of the body

and all kinds of stuff, the liver's on the left. It's crazy. It can be if it's Citis and Versus Universalis or whatever, you know, complete reversal. There are some people who have the speech part of their brain on the right side rather than on the left. Most people, if you have a stroke on the left lateral side of your brain, you'll have trouble speaking. You may have a thing called Broca's aphasia, where you have trouble getting words out, or it's like a constant word search. Like times when you've heard me trying to think of the correct word to say, those people, they never get out of that loop. Or there's a Wernichies aphasia where they don't understand anything either. and I can't process words.

That's because the language section is all, you know, right above and just a little bit in front of the left ear. But there are some people where it's the opposite. And they have a stroke over there and they're totally fine. But then they end up having a stroke on the right side. Now they can't speak. So, yeah, crazy. It really is. Anyway.

Yeah. So I guess that's that. Let's do this. Hi, Dr. Steve. This is Karen from Wisconsin. Hey, Karen. Okay, about three months ago, I had this headache that if I could have chopped my head off, I would have. Okay. That went away the next day, but since then I've had a cough.

And my doctor listened to my lungs, and my lungs are fine. Apparently, I don't have COVID, even though I got the jab late last year. Now, when I cough, I don't cough up mucus or anything. and he's so loud when I'm breathing that my dog looks at me funny and my doctor gave me prednisone and a steroid inhaler and nothing works she doesn't know what else you can do she won't order like an x-ray or anything because apparently I have to do that

and if I ask for it then I have to pay for it Oh, my God, that sounds like Catch 22. Remember in Catch 20, in Catch 22, the Yossarian, the pilot, or I guess he was the Bombadier, but he wanted to get out of flying bombing missions of World War II. I said, all I got to do is, you know, is say you're crazy. But then if you said you were crazy, you couldn't be crazy. Oh, yeah. So then they couldn't let you out.

And that was Catch 22. And then, of course, Catch 22 became everything. Yes. In that, you know, in that. So that was originally a movie. No, it was originally a book. Okay, okay. But the movie by Mike Nichols is awesome.

The TV show, not so much. They really didn't get the humor in the TV show. I never saw it. It was, I think, yeah, it was on one of the cable networks, and I really was disappointed in it. It was, you know, it was a satire. And the Mike Nichols movie, is brilliant, but anyway.

Let's see. I'm normally healthy, but I did have pneumonia and bronchitis, but that was way back like 10 plus years ago. Yeah. So I still have the cough. I don't have it that often, but I mean, it's every day. Yeah. So, and I'm wheezing most of the time.

Okay. But I'm not dying. I don't feel like it. But it just feels like it's heavy in my... I'm going to discount the headache part. Yeah. And I'll tell you why, because there are coughs that cause headache, and sometimes that can be a sign of leakage of cerebral spinal fluid in the brain.

Yeah. And people that get this cough and that'll cause headache as the increased pressure from the cough sort of forces some of the cerebral spinal fluid out. And people with chronic cerebral spinal fluid leak have all kinds of problems. So I'm going to assume that's not it. Because that's really the other way around. The cough makes a headache, not the headache starting the cough. But I would look at the drugs that she's on.

She's on an ACE inhibitor. Blood pressure medicines for sure. Blood pressure medicines can cause chronic cough. Post nasal drip can cause it. Asthma reflux. that's a big one, gastrointestinal reflux. And the x-ray for that, there's a simple x-ray for that. It'd just be a barium swallow and where they're just looking to see if under

fluoroscopy where they turn the x-ray video camera on and see if your stomach contents are coming up into your esophagus. And if they're coming up far enough, that can just cause a chronic cough. And then just chronic bronchitis. if you had an, you know, if you had emphysema or something like that. So or obstructive lung disease from smoking in the past, a foreign body can do it too. So, you know, you get a foreign body lodged in your lung and it keeps trying to get rid of it. It can cause cough.

So what I would recommend is that if they're not going to do an x-ray, for goodness sake, do a spirometry. Spirometry is where you blow into a tube and then it will determine what your lung volumes are with inhaling and exhaling. And if it shows obstructive disease, well, then you probably have chronic bronchitis. They can treat that. There are things that they can give you for this instead of just blowing you off like this. You know, but a chest x-ray, CT scan of the lungs, or, you know, an MRI of the lungs, that could be something. Treat post-nasal drip.

Go ahead. I was going to say post-nazal drip for sure. And the other thing is she could treat GERD just for the heck of it. And if that helps her cough, I mean, that's a pretty simple treatment. And it's not going to affect, if she does have something else going on in her lungs, it's not going to affect that. So she might be able to try just treating herself with some anti-reflux medication. The thing is, if it's bad. mechanical. Decreasing the acid content in the stomach is great, but the content still

come up, you know, so that'll improve it, but may not make it go away. But yeah, he's right. There's over-the-counter stuff for reflux. Yeah, the only other thing I could think of is if she had a headache first, maybe she had a, maybe she had the flu. If they checked her for COVID, but didn't check her for flu, she could have a headache from the flu and then got the respiratory stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, hopefully, hopefully she gets better soon. I'm looking up something here. There's a, Oh, Cush made it. Cush.

There is a thing called Brady Cynon that plays a major role in dilation of microscopic vessels. And it dilates arterial cerebral vessels, contributes to that migraine pain. So she talked about migraine. The other thing is that Brady Cynon is also involved in cough, too. And this, a Brady-Kinin mechanism is what's blamed for the cough that is caused by ACE inhibitor blood pressure medications and angiotensin receptor blocker blood pressure medications. So Brady-Kinen induces sort of sensitization of these airway sensory nerves. They cause airway smooth muscles to constrict, leading to bronchal constriction and cough. So it is kind of interesting.

A headache. Brady-Kinen is associated with that, also associated with cough. There may be a connection there. She'll email me. I'll do some more research on this if we can find something. Okay. All right. Let's see here.

Hi, Dr. Steve. This is Phil from Tampa. I was calling because I had two quick questions. I hope semi-related. The first question is, you know, in the past couple of shows, you've been talking about people who've needed procedures that have had, you know, rods in their spine or screws or placing screws. I'm just curious, why doesn't the body reject, I'm assuming, metal in your body.

Like, it just seems weird to me that the body wouldn't see that and be like, oh, no, that's got to go and try to do something about it. And then my second question is, you know, we talked to. talk a lot about how the body breaks down and everything either decays or, you know, gets worse. Is there any part of the body that is surprisingly resilient to either break down, decay? Yeah, the nervous system, basically once it forms, that's mostly it. The nerves that you were born with, basically are the ones that you still have. and some of them will regenerate peripheral nerves will regenerate but the central nerves

they'll change their connections and do some uh i mean that's how memories and how you learn music and things like that are for them but uh for the most part that's pretty resilient yeah um that's why we have a blood brain barrier too is because it's so precious in there the environment is that you don't want just every tom dick and harry being able to invite you know to invade the neighborhood of the central nervous system. So there are only certain drugs they can get past there, certain cells they can get past there, et cetera. Now, for the first part, I think we've answered this question before.

You can reject certain metals. You can be allergic to them. Oh, heck, yeah. And I was skeptical that you could be allergic to titanium, but then we found literature that showed that there is a very small subset of people that can't have titanium implants because there are. actually allergic to them. One of the first, the first weird medicine we ever did, Danny Ross, showed us a rash on

his abdomen that was right where the peg from his genes were, and we diagnosed him with a nickel allergy. And those are really easy. You just put, you know, don't wear jeans that have those kinds of studs, or you can paint fingernail polish over those, or you can put a Band-Aid over the stud or whatever. where it comes in contact with your skin. So that's interesting. But it is kind of different than the way that we reject hearts and stuff.

Hearts and kidneys have proteins on them that say this is me, this is me. I'm friend. We have a friend and foe system. And so those proteins say friend, friend, friend, friend. Now when the body misinterprets those signals, then you have an autoimmune disorder. That's where the immune system, attention. It attacks its own body cells. Rheumatoid arthritis is a good example of that, where the killer cells that are supposed to be destroying foreign bodies in your system misrecognized cartilage proteins as being foe.

And so they will, you know, attack them. And so, but anyway, so when you put a heart in somebody, it's just got all these foe. I'm foreign, I'm, you know, I need to be destroyed type proteins on them. And so the body's immune system will go and try to just kill it. So you have to give those people medications to just suppress those cells. Of course, when you do that, they do serve a real purpose. And when you suppress those cells, you run the risk of other problems. And so there are people who are on certain anti-rejection drugs that are at increjection.

increased risk for certain infections or for certain neoplasms because the body's cells that are supposed to be killing those things are now being told to shut up. So, but anyway, very interesting. Let's do this one. Can any part of the human body regenerate itself? Yeah. Bye, Casey. Bye.

She's not here. Genius. No, yes, of course. If I cut off some, if I just yank off someone's toenails, they'll regenerate. Peripheral nerves, the very, the ones in your fingers and those kinds of things, if you damage those, if you give the body the right environment, those can regenerate. Skin? Yeah, skin. Yeah, good one.

Muscle. A lot of times, though, if you cut too deep into the skin, the way it regenerates with the scar, though, so it's not true regeneration. Yeah, that's true. But if it's a kind of superficial, as long as you're healthy. The liver is the best one I can think of. If you cut out a big chunk of your liver, it'll just grow back. But I think Stacey's question is a good one. Why can chameleons regenerate their arms, and we can't?

And when we figure that one out, we will have made a real step forward in medicine. Anyway. All right, Dr. Scott, let's see here. Before we get out of here, we can take a couple more calls. think. And do you have anything from the waiting room? Nope. We're good over here. All right. Then let's do, how about this one? Let's see what this is. This is recognized in public. We may have done this before. Hey, Dr. Steve, everybody else there. How's everybody doing? Good. Hey, thanks, man. What are you doing?

Fantastic. Great to hear. All right, I have a couple of questions that I haven't heard addressed in a long time. if they've been addressed. I know probably the second part, yes. The first one is for Dr. Steve or Dr. Scott and anyone else. Have you been recognized at your practice? You had a patient, walk in, sit down and say, hey, aren't you Dr. Steve of weird medicine fame? And if so, do you have an experience with that?

As much as you can tell, you know. Yeah, that's a tough one. You have to be careful. But I did have this happened a couple of times. And one, I'm giving a very sort of serious talk about, you know, goals of care and things like that in, let's say, an advanced illness. And the person turned to me and said, do you know Anthony Coomia? And I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. And he said, yes, you do.

I recognize your voice. And this was early on. And, yeah, that was, it was, that was cool. And then, you know, we all kind of bonded over that over the long term, but they, that was an interesting moment. And, you know, anyone who was an Anthony, Opian Anthony fan for a long time, if they listened for a long time, particularly after the W&W days, then they would, most of the time they'd have a clue who I was. You know, if they said, you know, I recognize your voice. Do I know you from somewhere? I say, are you an L.P. and Anthony fan?

And then if they say yes, and I'll say, well, yeah, you probably heard my voice. That may be what it is. Tacey got mad. She gets mad every time I get recognized in public. We were in line to get into a plane in Hawaii. Hawaii. Yeah, I've told this story. Yeah.

I remember that. And I was just saying, I'm wondering, you know, they were talking about you could only have three ounces of fluid. And I remember I said, you know, I'm wondering how much fluid you can have in a baby bottle. You know, if you got a baby. And this guy turned around and he said, I knew that was you as soon as I heard you say the word fluid. That's funny. That's funny. Now, Dr. Scott gets recognized all the time, but that's because he tells everyone.

Well, almost everyone. Almost everyone. Hey, we did have it. Remember how many years ago we opened that, that, um, the. the dud of a beer store and remember the guy that was that set us up with our credit card machine

said that he would connect us with a guy in Bristol and a guy in Bristol on the brewery and the guy in brewery didn't know then he started going wait a minute who are you talking about and we were talking about P.A. John

and he was like wait a minute wait a minute John so-and-so is P.A. John from weird medicine we were like yes He's like, oh, now it all makes sense. Well, yeah, and then he goes, and wait a minute, but doctor, he goes, wait a minute, you're sitting up this credit card machine for these two guys in Kingsport. Right.

Dr. Steve and Dr. Scott, and the guy's like, yes, why? He goes, dude, those are guys for weird medicine. And the credit card guy didn't know. Yeah, we ended up being buddies with him. Old Ken Mognac. He's been on the show. Moniac's been on the show. He still got his place?

Out of the beer brewing business. Is he? Yeah. It's too bad. And he made good beer. He made very good beer. He's no longer doing it. And they're trying to sell that building now.

Oh, is that right? Yeah. Yeah, I hate it. We did a comedy. Just COVID, just whacked him out. We did a comedy event there and all kinds of stuff. I really like. I enjoyed Ken a lot.

Okay. So this guy has a two-part question. Second question is a pretty general weird medicine classic annals question. Excellent. How can I explain to my wife? why my hand is in my pants. Okay, number one. Okay, you can't.

Before I hear anymore, you can't. Okay, next question. Oh, I'm sorry. How can I explain to my wife why my hand is in my pants? And I tell her, my balls are itchy. I'm doing the old pinching and rolling, the old Al Bundy with the hand on my pants. Yeah, just tell her this. All right.

I'm sorry. And she said, why are your balls always itchy? Why are you always doing that? Yeah, if she had balls, she would know. And I don't have a good enough answer other than they just are. Yeah. So the scrotum, women don't understand this part of male anatomy because their gonads are inside their body because they can exist at body temperature and make eggs. Apparently, we can't make sperm if our testicles are at body temperature.

They've got to be exactly three degrees below, which means that now, instead of them being inside our body, they've got to hang outside our body, just ripe for somebody to kick us in them. and they're in this sort of thin sack made out of skin and, you know, this sort of membranous tissue that lines it called peritone. It's an extension of peritoneum, which is the lining of the abdomen. And so because we have that sack lying outside of our skin, and it lies between two things which we call thighs, which most of us are bigger than they should be, there's not a lot of air getting in there. No. And there's sweat and there's air.

And sweat and air cause an itchy environment and your balls are going to be itchy. And I never have my hands down my pants. My balls, where my scrotum never itches, but there are guys that do. Maybe you have a mild fungal infection in that area. And you may think about getting some fresh. balls, which is tapioca powder. And if that doesn't do it, try treating your

nuts with an over-the-counter antifungal, a jaw hitch antifungal for a while, and then putting the fresh balls on. A spa day for your nuts. Yep. And then, yeah, and then try a spa day for your nuts. Whatever that is. Dr. Scott

thought this one out, but anyway. But I think that's what is. You got anything on that? No, I agree with you 100%. Yeah. That's all you can tell. You say, listen, this is how our species procreates. Tell your fingertips are cold and your testicles are warm. Yeah, but your armpits are warm, though, too, so you can just do that. But that'd be weird if you put your hands in your armpits.

I still just think. I love to masturbate. I love to masturbate. Yeah, just don't tell you think you have a fungal infection down there. Well, no, no, no, no. No, I'm telling him. No, I know, I know. But if you want to, I mean, now it's become a habit.

But if your balls really are itchy all the time, if you're scrotum, it's not your balls. It's your scrotum as actually itchy all the time. You might, there are a couple of things you can do about it. And I enumerated those. No reason to go into it again. If you didn't hear it, this is an audio podcast. Just rewind. All right.

Let's see here. Hey, I've just got something to say about, the comment that was made earlier about having no breasts and how someone shared that was a very personal thing I'd just like to talk about that a little bit because not all men like

big breasts. Thank you. Yeah, right, right, right. No, what he's talking about is PA Lydia and I'm going to keep that for the next time she's here because that is true. You know, there are somebody for everybody and I'm glad that there are guys that like women that don't

have large pendulous breast because it's just less competition for me. That's it. Scott's not even listening. He's over there typing. Yeah, I'm talking to Kush. Okay. All right. Let's see. Hey, Dr. Steve and crew?

Hey. I wanted to ask you about at the end of one of your last episodes you said you were going to talk about stage fright and urinating for men. We did this one last week.

Yep. Okay, go listen to last week's show. The answer was there. We were talking about shy bladder. Quick little question about cold sores. I never get them in the summertime. I mean, it's getting winter. Now, I've had three of them so far.

That's why they call them cold sores, but it is a bit of a misnomer. And what's the best way to treat a cold sore? Okay, so there's cold sores, and then there's cold sores. Certain cold sores are caused by herpes simplex virus. and herpes simplex virus number one loves to live on the human face, particularly near the mouth, and that's just where it likes to live. And yes, can you give someone a blowjob or perform other sort of oral treats on them and transmit it? Yes, you can, but it doesn't like to live there, and it will often cause a much less severe syndrome,

although not always. Now, people say, well, Herpes Symprix virus is the good one. Herpes simplex 2 being the genital one is the bad one. Not true. The one that causes herpes encephalitis is almost universally Herpes Symplex 1, and that's an infection of the brain. So, you know, that's rare, but when you see it, it's almost always herpesiflex 1. So even though Herpes Symplex 2, the Junkal region version of herpes causes us more.

lifestyle issues, the herpes simplex one is the worst one. Now, some people get a thing called chelitis in the winter, and that is where the corners of their mouth will crack, and it'll get sort of granulation tissue there, and they will call that a cold sore. And that is a cold sore, but it's not the same thing. So the ones that you're having may be actually related to cold weather. Now, is it possible that some people get herpes cold sores in the winter because cold air is, you know, more stressful? Yeah, that's possible because we tend to get more herpes outbreaks during periods of stress. But I just think we're talking about two different things. And one is related to environmental changes in the skin due to cold weather and drier air. And then the other one

is just, you know, it's her piece. All right. What else you got? Scott's, he's checked out. Wrap it up, baby. So I'm just going to wrap, wrap, wrap it up. All right. Well, thanks always go to Dr. Scott when he's actually here in the studio, even when he is here.

Something I'm not here. Thanks to everyone who's made this show happen over the years. Thanks to everybody in the waiting room, particularly, let's see who we got. Yeah, Amy, talk like a hick to you, whose birthday it is today. Yep, 55 W2. Sean P, who I'll be hanging out with in Rochester, New York, February 3rd at DabbleCon. Get your tickets now at WATPLive.com. And I think I'm just going to get to go to this one and just sit and hang out and not actually have to work.

So I'm looking forward to that. Amanda Davidson will be there as well. And I think we are sitting with Carter Electric's wife, although I don't want to blow up any, you know, secrets or anything about the event, but that's all I'm saying. So we will have a fun time at that, even if nobody shows up. So, but if you want to hang out with us and, you know, drinks around me, at least one or two, if you're not sober, if you are, hearty handshake instead, check us out at wATP live.com. Many thanks to our listeners.

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. Hello, Holly, and Steve. Now, there's your shout-out, so Merry Christmas. Thank you.