Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 537 - Gomer Pilonidal Cyst

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

Dr Steve and crew discuss: pilonidal cysts quiz: what's the percentage of bones in the foot? can you breathe and swallow simultaneously? What is the diving reflex? How does the body tell the difference between flatus and stool in the rectum? ozone cleaners weird workplace rule how do cancers develop in response to toxins? 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, Geno Bisconte. Stuff you will never hear on the main show ;-) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why are cats such great bakers? They make everything from scratch. What did the stuffing say to the turkey? I'm so into you. I decided to sell my vacuum cleaner. It was just gathering dust. If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve, host of weird medicine on Sirius XM103

and made popular by two really comedy shows, Opie and Anthony and Ron and Fez, you would have thought that this guy was a bit of, you know, a clown. Why can't you give me the respect that I'm entitled to? I've got the period crushing my softness. I've got Subola vibes dripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my infectable woes.

I want to take my brain out and blast it with the wave, an ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsating shave. I want a magic pill. All my ailments, the health equivalent of citizen cane. And if I don't get it now in the tablet, I think I'm doomed, then I'll have to go insane. I want a requiem for my disease. So I'm paging Dr. Steve.

From the world famous Cardiff Electric Network Studios. It's weird medicine, the first and still only, on censored medical show and the history of broadcast radio. Now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal. Dr. Scott, the traditional Chinese medicine provider, gives me street crept. The wack-all alternative medicine assholes.

Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. And in the studio, Tacey, my partner in all things, Tacey. Hello, Tacey. Hello. And back from sabbatical, P.A. Lydia. Hello. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet.

If you've got a question, you're embarrassed to talk to your regular medical provider. Oh, my God. If you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider, or if you just can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call at 347-766-4323. That's 347. My brain got ahead of my tongue. Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine or at DR Scott WM. Visit our website at Dr.steve.com for podcasts.

medical news and stuff you can buy. And most importantly, we're not your medical providers. Take everything here with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking it over with your health care provider. All right, very good. Please don't forget to check out stuff.doctrsteve.com. Stuff. Dot, dr.steve.com.

Our website's a little weird right now because I've been working on it. But stuff.com still works. You can go straight. You didn't get that widget that you wanted. for the holidays. We'll go buy it for your damn self. You're an adult. And you can do that at stuff.doctrsteve.com. Just click straight through. It really helps keep us on the air. And simply herbals.net. That's simply herbals.com. That's Dr. Scott's website. Check it out for your CBD, nasal spray needs and all kinds of other stuff like that. And then Tacey and I are on Patreon.

Patreon.com slash weird medicine. Finally, the Chad Zumach episode is out. It's there. After all of this talking about how I was going to edit it and chapterize it and try to make it make sense because it was one person with ADHD talking to another person with ADHD. I just said screw it and I just threw it on there as it was. And actually I think it probably makes more sense. Yeah, it probably does. And so, and Dr. Scott was on that. It was the only time he's been on Patreon.

Patreon.com slash weird medicine. We've had Pete Davidson. We've had the troika of opium. Anthony. We're going to, Joe List and Kevin Brannon are coming on. We're going to have some interesting people on over the next few months. So, check that out. And then, if you want me to say fluid to your mama or if you want Myrtle to... You don't want Myrtle. I put that in, two and a half minutes. P.A. Lydia, were you here that day? I was. You were, because I have video of you laughing. She was here. But, yeah, this person called and asked

or you know in cameo said can you do that old lady character because my wife hates it and could you do it for a really long time and myrtle can just talk forever so if you want me to put the wig and the teeth on that's the same price it's nine dollars the same price everyone that's right low low price so cameo.com slash weird medicine all right very good a dr scott simply herbals dot net still going uh check him out at simply herbal dot net that's simply herbals dot net what's going on there selling that nasal spray like crazy okay very good

very good and you have a super secret project that you can't talk about yet is that correct it is super secret and I can't talk about it but we're working on it okay all right stay tuned well part of the problem is Denver's getting snowed in and that's where part of the secret project is in Denver yes I'm gonna give you three what else do they sell in Denver can't imagine oh my god

It's top secret, Dr. Steve. All right, very good. That's awesome. Check out Dr.steve.com, and we'll try to, and simply herbals. net, we'll try to keep you up to date on that. I completely revamped the website, and I did it by myself, and now it looks like shh. So I'm working on it. I'm working on it.

Give me a little bit of time where I can actually spend some time on it. And let's see here. Yeah, all right. Should we explain why we haven't been. while we missed a week? Well, it was New Year's. Oh.

Yeah, we can talk about it. I mean, that's why we didn't have a show on... Yeah, it was going to be a first ever Christmas Eve show. Oh, yes. Okay, I know, okay. You were all excited, and somebody decided to get, you know, the puke bug or something. Yeah, so first, Liam's girlfriend had it, and then we thought we were out of the woods, and then Liam got.

it. So the incubation time on this virus was about three or four days. That was what screwed it up. And then Tacey got it. And then Christmas Eve, we were going to start. And Beck and I said, if we don't get it by Christmas Eve, we're in the clear. And Christmas Eve, four in the morning, Beck started barfing. And what a good kid, too, didn't even wake me up. I just, you know, I heard him up at like 7.30 in the morning because I was getting ready to do some stuff, you know, cooking and all that kind of crap. I said, what are you doing up? He said, I've been throwing up since four.

It was like, damn, dude, why didn't you? I mean, in the past, if they threw up or, you know, if they had a bad dream, they would wake us up. And he just, you know, soldiered through on his own, didn't want any medicine, finally took some Fennergan that made him sleep all the day. And he, you know, anyway, so. we didn't want anybody else because then the clock starts ticking for me again

because I was out of the woods at that point from Tacey's episode but yeah the yesterday or today was the last day no gosh that's not right Wednesday or Thursday well I've been sleeping

on the couch for another no sleeping on the couch for another no my last day was Wednesday so you know there's no none of that virus in house now that we know of unless we got it in the wild so yeah we we were going to have a christmas eve show and we had christmas music that scott and i were going to ruin yes we're going to butcher it damn it i know oh well i practiced like for like 15 minutes before i did you yeah i practiced like i normally did so i was just waiting for you to bring the sheet music

and then learn it on the air okay well anyway so yes that's thank you tacy i sort of forgot not that. Anywho, put it out of my mind on purpose. How long did it last? Eight hours. Max,

max. And then you feel crappy. Oh, that's not long enough to lose weight or anything. No. I lost about a pound. But then the next day, you're like,

yeah, I can eat. Yeah, it's totally wiped out. Yeah, but then after that, you're like, I can eat anything I want to. And then, you know. I've got a pound to spare. Got to make up for it.

Correct. all right well do you guys have any topics lydia did you bring anything today no i mean i've always just so there is something called instagram yes right and they have these i've heard of this thing reals okay which i've newly discovered i don't know what those are they are these little short videos oh it's their version of tic-tok yeah and you can see all of these gross and disgusting procedures oh for some reason they think that i like it which i kind of do Yeah. So it was something I've never encountered in medicine.

And maybe you have, Dr. Steve, the concept of ingrown hairs we know about. Yes. Right. Right. But the concept of these ingrowing hairs that grow for years. Oh, yeah. And they get up to like 10 to 20 inches long. Oh, wow.

And then people pull them out. Huh. You know. I've not ever heard of such a thing except in a pile of idle cyst. Yeah. These are just places on. That sounds. I looked at it.

I mean, there's an up-to-date section. Right, on psodofiliculitis, but, you know, that's usually we think of it as being a problem when it's associated with infection. Right. Anyway, my question is, I've never seen it in someone. I have never either, except you, and a pylidylidyl cyst, so let's talk about those for a second. Yeah. When I was in medical school, I remember scrubbing into surgery, and they would pimp you constantly, just ask you question, question, question, and half the time you didn't know what the hell. And this time, I was totally prepared because I realized.

They realized they were taking all the questions out of the front of the book where they talked about the history of the surgeries that we were doing. So I knew I was scrubbing in to a colisisestectomy, and I knew that son of a bitch was going to say. The little blue book. Yeah. And I knew they were going to say, you know, when was this surgery first performed? And I could, then I could say it, you know, because I was ready for him. And when I answered it correctly, he was like, oh, okay, here we go. so he kept asking more and more questions

and then he got to one I didn't know the answer to I said well I don't know that but I know this other thing and so I answered he said good technique always answered the question that you know the answer to so rather than the one that I asked you so I'm going to answer the question that I know the answer to which is about pylon idol sis because I don't know about these damn

ingrown things you know they're 20 inches long but pilo being hair, nitis being nest, so it's a nest of hairs. And it's basically ingrown hairs above your ass crack. And those things can get really long. And when it comes from sitting, slouching basically, if you're sitting reclining and you're sitting on your sacrum instead of on your isheal tuberosities. So if you feel that, if you guys are sitting and people who are listening right now,

sit up straight put your hand under your ass and you will feel a bone right about equal to where your anus is but over to the side on either side there's a bone there and that's what you're sitting on do you feel that those are the

issue of tuberosities that's what you're supposed to sit on but if you feel above your ass crack to that flat place you can slouch backward and you can sit on that that's your coxics and you're sacrum

and if you sit on that then what you can do is you can compress the hair follicles and push the and you end up pushing them under the skin and the hair will continue to grow

but it grows under the skin yes way more often in men than women because I don't have ass crack hairs like that yeah I think so that's a great question taste let's see and a lot more in athletes wearing jockstraps, football players, catchers. Really?

Yeah. I know. I can see. That makes sense. The sweating and the, the, those jock straps kind of rubbing and kind of forcing those hairs back in. Interesting. Tacey, guess what? Give yourself a bill. Damn it.

Pilot Nidal disease occurs predominantly in males at a ratio of three or three or four to one. Dang it. Predominantly in O'Fey, typically in the late teens to early 20s, decreases after age 25, and rarely

occurs after age 45. So I can slap all I want to. There you go. With you all. There you go. So anyway, yeah, very interesting. And those things will fill up with hairs that are really long. And the problem of the pylonidyl cyst is

you can, you know, if it gets infected, you can stick a needle in it and it will always come back. So they just have to be surgically repaired. It can get quite deep. Yep. We don't go digging around in them in the office. No. No. I mean, you can stick your finger right in there.

It's disgusting. Anyway. All right. Very interesting. Yeah. Thank you, P.A. Lydia. I actually saw a patient this week and they have other problems like cancer that we're dealing with. But he said, yeah, my sister is starting to leak. And I'm like, buddy, we got bigger fish.

Yeah, yeah, I see that all the time, too. Yeah, people with stage four cancer that are, you know. Having to sit a lot. Or just worried about things that are tangential to what's going on. Because that's easier to focus on, I think. Probably. It's too, it's overwhelming. So talk a little bit about those ingrown hairs.

Like when they pull them out, what happens? Oh, man. So it's like they, what is it called when you de-had? You take the plane. off of something. Yeah. I can't remember. Anyway, you take the initial layer of skin off

and just open it up because it looks like a deep black head and they start pulling it out and it's just this hair that just comes out. Something even more disgusting is look up botfly infestation where the botflies will deposit their larva under the skin and you see people, you know, now I can't think of the word either where you decap it. Oh, man, yeah. Anyway, you take off the top layer and then you take tweezers and you just start pulling these giant maggots. Oh, for God's sats.

It's so satisfying. Where does that happen? Here? Not around here. Where are bot flies? I don't know where bot flies are. They're not here, though. Where are, oh, we'll ask, Echo.

Echo, where are bot flies found? According to an Alexa answers contributor, bot flies are found in Mexico, Central, and South America. In the U.S., cases usually occur in travelers who have visited endemic areas. Flies live near water. Thus, coastal and forested or jungle areas are in the endemic. Thank you very much. My pleasure.

Just doing my job. Echo. Oh, yeah, there you go. Thank you. She's such a good sidekick. I'm sorry, I was trying to show Tacey a video, and the sound keeps going on. I thought you were playing some kind of old spaghetti western. Yeah.

All right. You guys ready to do some questions? Yes. Okay, all right, let's do it. Number one thing, don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. All right, well, we have a quiz from Stacey. And this is a good one. I think this is a good one.

We'll go around the room. We'll see. Okay, and this is Price is right rules. No Googling. Yeah, no Googling. What percentage of the 206 bones that's in the human body? What percentage are in your feet? So what percentage of the bones of the human body are in the feet?

And we'll give you that there are 206 bones in the human body. All right, Dr. Scott? 10%. Tacey? 12%. Damn it. Lydia 1% bill

I'm just kidding Actually the 10% sounds good I'm gonna go with with Tacey what did you say 12 12 yeah I'm doing I'm sorry we're having to split hairs here It's price is right rules We're going with 11.5

Oh that's a terrible answer She's getting a negative balance It's not a terrible answer Yeah that's a negative answer Strategically there's only one answer There's only one answer Yeah 13 right that's the

if you don't know the answer that would have he's right strategically from game playing because remember if price is right rule it does

I'm not explaining this is right okay but the answer is going to astound you there are is it more

yeah that's 25% of the bones in the feet yes so here's the deal there's 26 bones in every foot and there's two feet so if we ask

echo ECHO, what percentage is 52 of 206? 52 is 25.24% of 206. Fantastic, Tacey, you win. I win. You gave her a bail. That's two for her. No, we're two behind.

Yay, Tacey. That's just what I get for trying to read math in my head. All the metatarsals and tarsals. Yeah. Philanjis. Yeah, I know. You could not have a pigeon hold that answer anymore. I know.

It had to exactly be 11.5. That's the only answer. Oh, my God. All right. That's okay. We can play poker with PA, Lydia. Yeah, we could, yeah. Did you bring cash, Lydia?

We might have a lot of debit card. That works. She may be marking herself as a mark, though, so that she would set us up. She's saying it back in. I believe she's saying begging. All right. Here's another one, and this is just a... Can you breathe?

and swallow at the same time. So that's a yes or a no question, so we won't really do that as a quiz. Anybody have any discussion on that? What about when you choke? Well, yeah. Is that breathing and swallowing at the same time?

I guess the question is, can you functionally breathe and swallow at the same time? Yeah, and what is breathing? Oh, what is breathing? How do you define the word is? Yeah. You know, is it the exchange of oxygen? Yeah, so breathing is breathing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, your epiglotta should close. Correct. So you shouldn't be able to take anything into your esophagus at the same time you take your breath. That's the whole point of that. That's right. Yeah, breathing ceases during swallowing, and the pause and breathing is due to inhibition of respiration at the neural control centers of the brainstem, not just due to. closure of the airway.

So there's a, I mean, it's an evolutionary advantage to, you know, our ancestors, the ones that didn't breathe when they swallowed and the ones that did and they were choking all the time and had aspiration pneumonia and stuff. It didn't live long enough to transfer their genetics to the next generation. Those neural control centers must be close to how we have patients swallow in order to hopefully get them back into sinus rhythm sometimes, do you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's some of that, okay, you bring up a cool thing, this thing called the diving reflex.

So when whales and other sea-going mammals dive deep, they can, well, how is it that they can take a deep breath and stay down there forever? Their lungs proportionally aren't that much bigger than ours, but they can stay down there for hours. And part of it is that when they dive, their metabolic systems start to slow down and their heart beat slower. Their vagus nerve gets stimulated, which slows down, you know, the blood flow from the heart to the rest of the body. And they're allowed to stay down longer. We have that, too. All mammals have it. Even land-going mammals have it.

This is the craziest thing. And when I was an intern, back before we had drugs like amiodron and stuff, we would have to shock people if they went into crazy rhythms a lot of times. And one time I had this guy, and he was totally stable. I said, you want to try something? And he said, sure. And I said, let's do a diving reflex. I can't even imagine doing this today. But we got a bucket of ice water.

and you know something like one of those plastic basins that they wash people with and we filled it up with water and ice and then we took the guy's head and we just smashed it in there said hold your breath and put his face in the ice water as long as he could stand it and when he came back up he was like that was very unpleasant and then boom his heart went back into normal rhythm that's cool yeah so the old diving reflex so yeah so all of those things are It's amazing. So why do we have that? It made our common ancestor able to live in the water, but did they give us the gene or did we give, or, you know, did we just have it?

And somehow mammals just had that. And so they were, you know, they could adapt to living in the water. I don't know. That's crazy. Yeah, you just would kind of, yeah. I guess it's like, well, stimulating to Vegas nerve. We had the common, when did we diverge from reptiles, right? We went through from reptiles to birds.

Well, it was before the big disaster, but we were shrews back then. I mean, mammals were during, when the dinosaurs died, the biggest mammal is about the size of a shrew. But there were mammal-like reptilian ancestors that they found. You know, you never find that one that's half and half. Half it, it's not how evolution works. But anyway, I don't know. It was a long time ago. Yeah.

Long as time. If you believe in evolution. Well, I'm joking. No, you're right. If you do. If you don't, you believe whatever you want to. It's all fatal judge here. I put dinosaurs at the nativity scene this Christmas.

Oh, did you? My daughter woke up to Christmas and we had a little nativity scene and there were the wise men and the dinosaurs. Oh, yeah. Well, see, because Noah didn't have room on the ark for the dinosaurs. Yeah, clearly. And then the other thing is, is that, you know, what I've heard the creation scientists say is that the smarter, the reason that you see more advanced animals higher up in the strata, you know, if you go in and you find a place where there's lots of layers over the eons, and you dig down, you'll see simpler and simpler animals the farther down. you go. And what they'll say is during the flood, the more advanced animals went to higher ground. And that's why you see that, okay, is that you'll see more advanced animals higher

up in the strata. And then, but the question that raises is that it must, you see clams everywhere from millions of years ago to now. So if their answer is right, then it implies that Some clams were smarter than others, and they got to higher ground during the flood. I don't know. Or just lucky, or they got washed up to higher. Oh, that might be. That's it, Dr. Scott, anybody. All right, here we go.

Well, hey, guys, thanks for the call. This is the Roane County Redneck, and I just wanted to know how to all the nerves in your rectal vault to determine whether it's, wait, let me get this alphabetical, a fart, a shit, or a shark. Thank you very much. Yeah, so how do you know? That could be the question of the day. When you expel something, you know, when you're getting ready to expel something from your rectum, how do you know it's a fart, a shit, or a shark? A shart is obviously a mistake.

Yeah, so I'm going to argue, let's take that out of there. Because you don't know that it was a shart because the whole reason it's a shart was you messed up. So obviously the system isn't perfect. But here, Tacey, you have some wine and... And Scott, do you have... No, I didn't mean that. Everybody has a drink. Okay, so everybody take a drink real quick.

Okay, we're going to take a drink. All right. Now, hold that in your mouth. Now, is it a fart, a shit, or a shard? I mean, is there water in your mouth, fluid in your mouth, or is it air? It's fluid, right? Okay. So let's think about it.

about how it's the same thing you know if there's air in your mouth if you blew up your mouth with with air you know that's air and you know when there's liquid in there so there are sensors that one of the things that liquid does let's talk about it is it exchanges heat more efficiently than air does right so if you have hot water hot water in your mouth you can feel that as trans you know that there's something that is touching all the areas of the buckle mucosa and it's transmitting heat either into the buccal mucosa or drawing it away from the buckle mucosa if the water's colder than you're if you get water that is exactly the temperature of your body

and you sit there long enough it'll extinguish that feeling you might not be able to tell so I mean how do I know that I'm holding a phone in my hand sometimes when I'm sleeping I think I still have my watch on my hand. So it isn't a perfect system, but it's pretty good. And from a evolutionary standpoint, it's very good because you don't want to be dropping loads around in your, you know, if you couldn't tell, you'd just be dumping loads where you're sleeping. That would be a mistake, but it's okay to pass a, you know, pass gas, right? Because for sanitation reasons, but also you don't want saber-toothed tiger's able to track you

to where you sleep. So, but the rectum has same sorts of nerves. They're just not as perfect. Now, you can't taste stuff. Thank God that's in your rectum. That would be horrendous if you're constantly tasting shit, you know, in your rectum.

But there is a person, and his name is Richard Christie. He worked for Howard Stern. He swore that if you poured different beers, into his ass he could tell the difference and he could sort of taste them now those have alcohol in them and the alcohol may actually right be absorbed and then draw

in some aromatics with it so I think he might be right and that would be an interesting test to do I'm not going to volunteer but or nor should we advocate for alcohol in the asses I would only do it for the science not not I don't add you know we've talked about on this show multiple times oh yeah don't

don't do that drink alcohol by shoving it up your ass. Or on a tampon as a woman. That was popular when I was in college. Well, we... What? Yeah, but did we debunk that? She's where...

She's... Yeah, no, you know that. You were... Well, maybe you weren't here. We did a vodka tampon challenge on the show. If you go back... That poor girl. In the archives.

Because we said, no, you can't get drunk that way. The vagina is not designed to absorb things. If you took that tampon and shoved it up your Yes, maybe, but even then, we also measured how much you could absorb into a tampon. It was less than an ounce. What about something like cocaine? Yeah, maybe, maybe. Possible.

Maybe, but, yeah, let's not give people ideas. But, yeah, we took a tampon saturated in vodka. She shoved it up her vagina, and then we did a breathalyzer test every 20 minutes during the show, and there was nothing. It never raised. And then she had an itchy vash. for like a month. I bet.

Yeah. Yeah, stupid. And then we showed frat guys, fraternity brothers, sorry Tacey, putting thimblefuls of alcohol under their eyelids. It's like, why are you doing that? First off, you can't, right, you can't get but a thimbleful. It's going to irritate your conjunctive. Well, and the eye can take a third of a drop.

Right, right. And then the rest of it runs out. runs out it's idiotic just drink it yeah if you're gonna drink it if you're gonna drink and uh and and and then we talked about the guy that um died giving himself champagne and it was he did two bottles of champagne and then was watching um auto and doing auto erotic asphyxiation and he died from alcohol poisoning not from the auto erotic asphyxiation you know it wasn't that wasn't the problem. He was breathing, or he had been breathing until he died.

You know, and so don't do that. Another guy did a concrete anima. That was stupid. Don't do that. Nope. Nope. Concrete, by the way, is an exothermic reaction. Maybe it gives off heat. It gets warm. And that guy cooked himself from

the inside. Died. Yeah. You know, I know all this stuff was from this journal called the National Association of Medical Examiners. I was It was a medical examiner when I lived in Vermont, and I joined, and it was their journal, and it was page after page after page of the most fucked up deaths you've ever seen. Yeah.

Well. So anyway, they love it, those guys. Oh, my God. Yeah, the pathology department is. Yeah, they're different. They're different. We love them, but they're different. Yes, we do.

All right. Now, this person, oh, Tacey, you need to listen to this one. Okay. Hey, Dr. Steve, this is Hoss. I just wanted to let you guys know that I work for our oxygen company. Okay. And we had to send in all our ventilators to Phillips for a recall. And Phillips thinks that it's caused by ozone cleaners.

Oh. But it also affects bi-paps and CPAPs. And I just thought you guys would want to know. Thanks, bye. Oh, and I've still been using my... Yeah. Oh, no. I quit using mine.

I'm not saying you shouldn't use them. I don't know what the... data is we if you go on those forums and what we're talking about is like the you know ozone cleaner for CEP machines and uh they don't actually clean anything they'll sterilize it okay and you would think that would be a good thing but if you go on the forums they're all just anti this and but I can't find any data that shows it's harmful at all although um I've been using uh ultraviolet cleaner for my retainer you know for my, what I call it

what I, Invisylines. And the damn retainer cracked and I think the ultraviolet has made the plastic brittle. They told me use the bright you know, retainer cleaner and it's just a pain. You have to put the little tablet in it's like

Polyden or not poly. What's the one? Polydent, the one that cleans your dentures. We know what you're talking about. I just felt like an old man. It's Polydent. Even more than I already do. So I got this. Those are ultraviolet thing thinking, whoa, you know, this is, I'm young and a hip. Shortwave or long wave. I don't know.

Well, there goes another $7,000, Steve. I know. All right. So anyway, just check your manufacturers and recommendations and check with your provider whether your ozone cleaner is okay for you. I mean, I wish we had the answer to that question. I know. I mean.

There's people doing research on it. I know that. For myself and for everybody else. Yep. All right. Well, let's look that up, see if there's anything more definitive out there for next week. All right. This is a weird one.

Hey, Dr. Steve. My name is Elliot. I just recently offered a job in a New York City hospital. And long story short, back in November of 2020, I was a participant in the AstraZeneca trials. Okay. And I took both shots. subsequently now offered a job in hospitals over here in New York, and they're not recognizing the AstraZeneca as a vaccine shock, and they want me to take two more shots.

Is that something that is safe to do? Thank you. Wow. That's a tough one. I'm looking here that says, now this is from NYCGO.com for traffic. Travelers to New York City vaccines listed for emergency use by the World Health Organization, such as AstraZeneca vaccine, as well as FDA or WHO approved mixed doses qualify. So isn't that interesting? Yeah.

I wonder what that's about. I could not find anything on this. The WHO recommends all countries except all COVID-19 vaccines, including the two made-in-19 vaccines, including the two made-in. China, AstraZeneca, one of the ones in the U.K. and then Pfizer. Was AstraZeneca an MRI vaccine as well? AstraZeneca was a weird vaccine. It used a viral sort of Trojan horrors. Okay.

And so it was different. But, you know, it was shown to be not as effective, but it was still effective. So I don't know. We'll have to do some more research on that Will you put a leave me a note Dr. Scott and we'll see what we can find out for him In the meantime I would question it And send us the policy

Let me and We'll look and see number one Can they do that? Well employers can either mandate or not mandate vaccines However they want apparently I was looking at particularly in New York I was looking for some ocean regulations on this as well.

And so I'm just going to say, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about right now. So, oh, wait, here we go. Medical workers ask Supreme Court to block New York vaccine mandate lacking. Okay, I don't know. So we will do more research on this one and get back to you. Okay? So next week we'll have a special episode on Astrozenica. All right.

Hi, you're going to stay. What's up, man? Hey, man. All right. That's that, buddy. How you have? Good, how are you? Oh.

All right. Good done. So what had happened was? Santa, yeah, Santa loved a woman that wasn't clean, apparently. What? So we ever, uh, forget. What? Santa love to go about and kind of hurt my day a little bit.

You know how it is. I don't. No. It continued to hurt. Okay. Like, for a day or two. Okay. Nothing, you know, too out of the ordinary, just a little dormness, a little tenderness.

Now, there's a bit of discharge. Oh, no. From the meatus. The meadus. And, uh, yeah, I'm a little, I'm made a, with a doctor tomorrow. Okay. But, well, no, but I just want to let you know. I'm having sex.

Yes! Oh, no. Congratulations, bro. So he's having sex. Dirty sex. It sounded like he said Santa left a woman that wasn't clean. Yes. I think over Christmas, he had intercourse.

Sounded then, I thought he might have had penile trauma. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah. That's what I thought, too. But if you fracture your penis, which is a possibility, that the pain doesn't go away in a couple of days. and that ends up being a medical, or, you know, a urologic emergency. But, yeah, then he had yellowish discharge, so that's more likely to be, you know, trick or gonorrhea at that point.

So get that taken care of. That one's treatable, easy to treat most of the time. There are some resistant strains to gonorrhea now, but we have treatments for this. And congratulations on having intercourse. That's great. What's that like? I wouldn't know

Oh, shut up To answer your question about flavors being lost during COVID a couple of shows ago Yeah I in fact didn't experience that in May of 22

And I lost everything Except sweet Well, except last Now, it came back Maybe about six months after so that's a long ago okay so he had loss of something everything but sweet oh sweet that's what i thought he said too okay okay yeah and that was back in may so we were talking about just you know we're not seeing this now back in the when this thing first started up that's how people

knew they had COVID was they lost their sense of smell and or not everybody but a lot of people did. And now people just have colds or they don't have anything and they test positive for COVID don't even know it. I did go to dinner with someone two days ago. And she recently recovered from COVID. It was right after Thanksgiving, she lost her taste and her smell. Oh. Strange, right? Health care worker had had COVID before. Wow. Wow. Well, most of the cases we're seeing now are serendipitous. They come in for an elective proceed. and then they test them before they do it and they're testing positive, they had no idea.

Yeah. Thank goodness. Yep, yeah, agreed. All right, so, and that's the thing. And then everybody freaks out. And I'm going to say this again. I've said it before on this show. There's five other endemic coronaviruses.

We don't test for those. Now the sixth one was novel and it caused no end of chaos, but now it's becoming endemic. It's just, you know, out there, obviously, because like I said, we're just finding it serendipitously now. Still rough for some people, no question about that. But, you know, the other five coronaviruses aren't innocent either.

They cause death and mayhem, too. It's just that back in the day before 2020, I mean, 2020, we didn't test for them. We just said atypical pneumonia, viral pneumonia, and people died from atypical or aka viral pneumonia and we never knew what it was. Now we can test for this one. But, you know, those other five, if we tested everybody that had a cold, you know, about 40 to 60 percent of them will have coronavirus of some sort. But we test for this one and now it's special. And, you know, people have to not go to work for seven days and they have to isolate and they have to do all this stuff. So at some point, we're either going to have to test for all these viruses,

Or we're just going to have to stop testing for it. Because at some point it becomes pointless. But anyway, I know we haven't quite gotten to that point yet. But this is another person that had a COVID issue. Hey, Dr. Steve, just listening to your recent episode talking about if recent COVID strains cause, you know, a loss of taste. And I'm just getting over, I don't know, I didn't test myself. I don't know if it was COVID or the flu or whatever, but, you know, I kind of had the flu slash COVID symptoms, cough, fever, body aches, et cetera. And then at the end, everything started tasting very bitter or just kind of, I just had a low-level bitter taste in my mouth.

So things like alcohol and coffee would taste really, really bad. And it's been three days maybe, it's starting to get better, but still, not quite there, but I didn't quite lose a full sense of taste, but my taste buds were definitely changed. Yeah. So there's lots of things can cause

bitter taste in your mouth, though. You know? Divorce. Okay. I'm going to get it. I got to give you. Give yourself a bill. One. Just at the end of the distance

in the class. Man. You are one for A pathetic loser. I don't think so. No, I was directed at me, too. Yeah, that's what I sort of started to say. It's not just you, Scott.

Oh, Lord of mercy. No. Yeah. So divorce, oral health issues. GI issues can also do it, acid reflux, but supplements and medications. So some things that you take. that you might take during COVID, like vitamin D, what? What are you, what are you?

It's hot in here again, hot in here again, hot. Vitamin D, iron, calcium, but people will take vitamin D while they're, when they have COVID-19. That can cause a bitter taste or metallic taste in your mouth. And stress and anxiety can cause alterations of the taste in your mouth as well. anxiety can cause dry mouth do you know the medical term for that anyone PA Lydia

I can't remember right now zero stomy but yeah but in this case it was temporarily related to the patients COVID-19 so we're going to just assume it was that but that's interesting so we are Scott getting a few people that are calling in saying yeah we're still seeing these

symptoms out there you and I haven't seen it, but they're still having it. I wonder. So in chemotherapy, right, when you get taste alterations related to chemotherapy, there's some data for sublingual B12. There's a trick where you do a super, super sour candy. Yeah. And it temporarily restores your taste. And all of, you know, we think that the COVID taste disturbance may be related to neurological impact, right? So I wonder if it might be helpful. Well, that's interesting. I don't know. Worth a try. Yeah. I, when I had Delta variant, I used Flonase the whole time because it just seemed like it made sense. And I never had any changes in my, I lost one-16th of my lung to scar tissue, but I didn't lose my sense of taste.

And I just, I attributed it to that, or I may not have lost it at all. But there is a little bit of data that says if you start using Flonase or other nasal steroids at the beginning of the syndrome that you, you may be able to prevent this. So that didn't get hurt anything. Something that's not hurtful, yeah. Yep. All right. So I'm sorry.

What's up, fellas? Life. Well, mine is a peachy team. So I went to the doggy yesterday, well, a doctor, or saw him here today or something. I got some doxycycline kits. Excellent. 100 milligrams, 14. For my drippy dick.

Yeah, fair. Oh, this is the sequel. Oh, good. A woman that wasn't clean. And this bitch. But anyway, while they were checking me out, nobody even looked at my dick. Oh, that's not cool.

No, that's not good. No, if you're going to treat STDs, you've got to look at the genitalia. You need to stick the swab up there. That's always fun. This little tiny swab, and they stick it up your urethra. And then not only does it need to sit there, but they have to twist it.

It's the twisting that gives you the abject agony. And I don't, I can't speak from experience on this one, but I have done this procedure on other people, and this is what they tell me. And then you culture it, and then that way you know if you're treating what you think you're treating. It's a hand people doxycycline.

Well, anyway, hopefully it gets better. Not special, I guess. But they checked my blood pressure, And it was like 180 over 80, I want to say? Yeah, that's high, but it was probably because you were getting STD treatment. You might have expected. Yeah, you might have expected the swab up the deck because you listen to the show. And as we talked about that a multiple times, that that's the correct way to do it.

So just get your blood pressure checked again. Yeah. And if it's back down and forget about it. If it remains elevated, get that treated because hypertension. attention is the silent killer. Yes. Thank you. All right, let's do this one.

Hey, Dr. Steve, Dr. Scott, Dr. Tacey, how are you guys doing? Good, how are you? You do well, thanks. I have a question about cancers that are caused by exposure to toxins like mesothelioma with asbestos or these rare cancers from people who were involved in ground zero cleanup. Does the cancer or like the cell mutations start at that moment of exposure? and it just takes years, you know, before it gets big enough to where it's detectable or causing symptoms? Or does it, you know, start some chain of events where it's in some latent phase and it's a ticking time bomb that starts causing cancer years down the road?

Yeah. I'm just wondering like these cancers from one-time exposure or like, you know, short period of time, how it causes cancer years later. Yeah, that's a good one. so let's talk about asbestos so asbestos is this mineral that you can pull apart into little fibers and so they used it for insulation for years and when you inhale that which i've i used to go gem mining in an asbestos mine so and by the way if you've been exposed to asbestos just don't smoke that's the big thing if you smoke and have asbestos then that's a real problem but the body can't break these things down and they get stuck in these tissues and they start causing inflammation

and irritation. And over years, they'll cause inflammation that'll change the DNA of some of the cells around them. And let's just say it's one in a million and you affect 100,000 every year. Well, then in 10 years, one of those cells you would expect would convert to a cell that could reproduce itself. It's unlikely if you damage DNA that it's going to be anything functional, right? It'll just kill the cell. But every once in a while, you'll damage the DNA in such a way that it'll start growing like crazy and it's successful. And when that happens, then that's basically cancer because it's growing. It's not supposed to be growing that way.

to be regulated and it's not listening to the signals trying to regulate it. So, anyway. And, yeah, so then that's what happened. So it could happen the first time, but it'd be very unlikely. It'd be like hitting the lottery. So I've heard the lottery described as if you take pennies and you stretch them from New York to L.A., and you take one of those pennies and paint it blue on the other side. side. And then you drive from New York to LA and you stop somewhere along the way and you pick up one of those pennies. And it's the blue penny. That's the same sort of odds of winning the lottery. So that's the same sort of thing here is that it's very unlikely. But then once it does happen, you know, once you win, someone wins the lottery. Once it happens, then the cancer is inevitable at that point. All right.

I do want to talk about this one. I hope. Hey, Dr. Steve, I'm the one that called you a couple weeks ago about the antibody level with the COVID vaccines and having the rough time with the third booster. So my COVID antibodies were a COV2 and IGG2 antibody screen, and it was 20,000 greater than 25,000 units, AU slash ML. It stated that anything over 50 units was considered. to be high. The reason I'm concerned is because I do have an autoimmune. I'm a teacher. I work as a paid EMT and I am exposed on a regular basis. And also when I contracted H1N1 and H1N2, I had a pretty

serious reaction where I ended up nearly on a ventilator with the... Yeah. I think that there's... What happened to the volume? Sorry. I think that there's an argument you could make that says I've already you know I have these huge antibody levels I don't pose a danger to anybody and you could probably get out of doing those other

vaccines and you just have your rheumatologist write a letter or your primary care. I think that's fine. I don't see any problem with that. Natural immunity is kind of interesting. There was a study and I talked about this on Twitter and we have a little bit of time left And this is a journal article from the American Journal of Public Health called SARS-Cove 2 infection, hospitalization, and death in vaccinated and then in unvaccinated but infected individuals.

So they were looking at the difference between vaccinated people and people with natural immunity. And what they found was that there was a 37% decrease in all costs. mortality in people who were vaccinated compared to the people with unvaccinated, who were unvaccinated but had natural immunity if they got it again. Now, 37% sounds huge. You know how many? So there were 34,000 kids in here. And you know how many of them died over this period of time?

And it was 12 months, four. And of the previously infected, the natural immunity, but unvaccinated kids, six out of 34,000. So that's just for the kids. The adults showed higher numbers, but this is all cause mortality. This isn't say that they died from the virus. It's all cause mortality. So the absolute risk, even in the adults where the numbers were more like, you know, 60,000 and, you know, people and 250, deaths compared to 400 and something, whatever, the absolute risk was still very, very small.

So the interesting thing in this is both sides, sadly there are sides to this, can say, oh, we're right. If you're a pro-mandate, you can say 37% decrease, okay? Or if you are anti-mandate, you can say the absolute risk is 0.0002. Both of those people are correct. That's the problem. And that's why it's so hard for us to reach any kind of consensus because we're all cherry picking the statistic that says the thing that we want it to say.

And they're both right. Neither one of those is wrong, you know, which is basically the same way of saying the same thing. They're right, and neither one of them's wrong. So I'm a dang genius. Anyway. All right, Dr. Scott, you had something. from the waiting room before we get out of here? Yeah, we do.

We have a question from Lovett. She's wondering if a white blood cell count of 11.5 is high. Okay. So would that be chronically high? Or is it just intermittently? I mean, just a one-off. Assuming it's one-off because she didn't say it was chronically high. Okay, so let's talk about both.

PA, Lydia, this is your realm. Lots to unpack there. Yes. So, yeah, if whether chronically or not, yes, technically, it is. So anything over 10, or 10.0 or in our world, 10,000 is high. So 11.5 would be 11.5,000. So the next thing to look at... What is that 11.5,000 per high-powered field? Or is that cells per deciliter? I thought it was cells per decilator. Okay. Take a peek. And so that would be your total white blood cell count. So then, you know, the next thing we look at is, is that chronic? Or is it acute? And

or micro later. What type of cells are elevated? So are they your neutrophils? If your neutrophils are more predominant, you would think about more like bacterial infection, more lymphocyte predominant when you look at the differential or the breakdown on your lab sheet. You might think more about viruses, maybe chronic inflammation, eosinophils being elevated. You might think more about allergies. What are all these different cells? You said neutrophils, lymphocytes, and eosinophil.

Yeah, just types of white blood cells, right, that make up your immune cells and they are targeted and powered to impact different things, whether it be bacteria, viruses. And they look different under the microscope. That's why they were, they called them that because they, the eosinophils took on more Eosin, which is a red pigment. And, you know, they wash these things with red and blue pigments and they, then you look at them under the microscope. I hope some of them will not hang on to the blue, but keep only the red. And the neutrophils, I guess, did a little bit of both, because they are kind of purply looking. And then the lymphocytes have bigger nuclei compared to the cytoplasm compared to, say,

a neutrophil. Yeah. So when you're thinking about it, you know, if it's a chronic thing, which we get referrals quite often, a chronic. Well, you guys get referrals for people who have, you know, slight anemia Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, probably the second most common to anemia

would be the elevated white blood cell count. So the first thing we do is we look at what type of white blood cells are elevated. And then, you know, you can do something called a flow cytometry if it's something that's very chronic, meaning it's lasting for a long time just to make sure none of them are cancerous. However, one of the most common reasons is something that induces chronic inflammation in the body. So something like cigarette smoking. smoking or chronic stress or chronic illness.

Really? So those are the most common causes of a chronic mild elevation, your white blood cell count. Okay. So now what do you do? So you're at your primary care physician's office. I say, well, you've got a white cell count that's high. I'm going to send you to the hematologist. Should you be worried about it?

What's the deal? No, the vast majority of the patients, we would take a peek. We would make sure that there's no sign of malignancy or concern for malignancy. And then kind of the chronic inflammation, stress or exposure to tobacco smoke would be a diagnosis of exclusion. And you just monitor it every few months, make sure nothing changes. Yeah. What about these people that have monoclonal gamopathy of uncertain significance? Mm-hmm.

So that would be something that we... What is that? So, I mean, I know it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one type of your white blood cells or closer to a stem cell is called a plasma cell. And a plasma cell exists in your marrow. It starts to mature. It should be exposed to an antigen or something like a virus and then go back and just its job should be to make antibodies to a certain virus or to a certain antigen.

And they remember it. And they remember it. And those antibodies are. proteins, and they come, those antibodies or immune globulins have light chains and heavy chains. And so sometimes a plasma cell line can get mutated, or a plasma cell can get mutated, make more of itself, and make an abnormal protein. And so when you look at someone's protein under mass spectroscopy, where you actually go and you kind of sort out all of the proteins in the person's blood or in the person's plasma, if you

see a spike of a certain protein that is a nonsense, but that is a clone, so they're all the same, but they're not really encoding for anything. That is monoclonal gamopathy. And as long as that patient doesn't have other signs of malignancy, like trouble with bone lesions, kidney disease, low blood counts, it's undetermined significance. So it's like something that has the potential to turn into malignancy. It's not malignancy, and we monitor it. What are the odds but that'll turn into a moment. It's one out of 10 per year. So you've got like a 10% risk per year.

Okay. So if you have it, and I'm going to stop myself, but the longer you have M-Gus, the more likely you are to develop into a cancer. But every year, it's still 10%. So if you have a 10-sided die, you could roll, you know, if you had a dye that had 10-sides and there was one blue side and at nine red sides,

you could roll red sides for the rest of your life. It's not impossible. Correct, yeah. But the risk does go up the longer you, you know. Okay. Very interesting. All right, well, thank you. You got anything else out there, Scott?

They're probably sorry they ask now. No, no, no. No, love it said thank you. She said her neutrophils were 78, 84. Yeah, so that's a little bit higher of a percentage. So maybe she's overcoming some recent bacterial infection. It could also be a stress. One thing is when you see an abnormal lab test and it's just out of the blue,

the first thing you do is repeated. Because there's this thing called regression to the mean where you will often, if you have an aberrant lab test, then you do it again, it's normal. If you do 20 lab tests and they have a 5% margin of error, that means it's very likely one of them will be abnormal. just because just because of lab error

and it's not that they made a mistake there is a margin for error in all of our tests none of them are so precise that there's no error in matter of fact you could not make a test that had that it's not physically possible in this universe to make one that

there will always be some error no matter how precise you make your measurement yeah I get tested again so if she had a white count of 11 7.2 and it was 80% Nutrophils, that's an ANC of 9.2, which is significantly. Absolute. Nutriphil count.

Yeah. Chargon alert. Yeah, sorry, guys. So, I mean, that's something to make sure you don't have any signs or symptoms of bacterial infection. It's sneaky urinary tract infection that could be going on and have it rechecked. Well, you women are always getting your cystitis, don't you? Yeah.

With your month, please. P after sex There you go Yes You're not kidding You're not kidding That's a serious answer It is

All right very good Well listen Thanks always go to Dr. Scott Thanks Tacey Thanks P.A. Lydia Thanks to everyone Made this show happen over the years Listen to our Sirius XM show

On the Faction Talk channel Serious XM Channel 103 Saturdays at 7 p.m. Eastern Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern On demand and other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy.

Go to our website at Dr.steve.com for schedules, podcasts, 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. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Thank you.