Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 559 - The Case of the Titanium Knee

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

Dr Steve, Dr Scott, Tacie discuss: Novel pancreatic cancer treatment ideas Menopause and Bayer Atypical Chest Pain Stress and blood sugar tolerance dependence, habituation, addiction genetic issues in substance abuse towels and alcohol total knee repair --> allergy seasonal allergy antibiotic allergy resistance to "all" pain meds? Please visit: stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) ed.doctorsteve.com (for your discount on the Phoenix device for erectile dysfunction) simplyherbals.net/cbd-sinus-rinse (the best he's ever made. Seriously.) RIGHT NOW GET A NEW DISCOUNT ON THE ROADIE 3 ROBOTIC TUNER! roadie.doctorsteve.com (the greatest gift for a guitarist or bassist! The robotic tuner!) see it here: stuff.doctorsteve.com/#roadie Also don't forget: Cameo.com/weirdmedicine (Book your old pal right now while he’s still cheap! "FLUID!") Most importantly! CHECK US OUT ON PATREON!  ALL NEW CONTENT! Robert Kelly, Mark Normand, 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

Echo tell me a joke. What did the Terminator say to his last sip of coffee? Asta la Burista, baby. I was going to tell you a dirty joke, but I don't want you to soil yourself. Why did the cat cross the road? Because the chicken had a laser pointer. 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 you give me the respect that I'm entitled to? I've got diphtheria, crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolov. I'm stripping from my name. nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbone, exacerbating my incredible woes. I want to take

my brain out, 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. From the world famous Cardiff Electric Network Studios, it's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history broadcast radio, now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal, Dr. Scott. Traditional Chinese medicine provider gives me street grad with the wackle alternative medicine assholes. Hello, Dr. Scott.

Hey, Dr. Steve. And my partner in all things, Tacey. Hello, Tacey. Hello. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you have a question, you're embarrassed to take your regular medical provider. If you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call 347-76-6-4-3-2-3. That's 347, Pooh-Hid.

Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine. We're at DR Scott WM and visit our website, 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 green assault. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking it over with your health care provider. All right, very good. Check out stuff. Dot, Dr.steve.com, stuff.

Dot, Dr.steve.com for all of your shopping needs, particularly Amazon. It really helps a lot. And, yeah, it's been dropping off. It's okay. We appreciate everything that you all do. If you go to stuff. Dot, Dr.steve.com and just click on, you know, go to Amazon. You can just go there and just skip over.

It's just a way station. Otherwise, you can scroll down and get the roadie robotic tuner. There's a discount on that now. It's the greatest gift that you could give to someone who has a, you know, a guitar habit, but also is under $200. And they have a new thing called the Rodeo Coach that actually teach you out to play your instrument, which I can't wait to see how that thing works. Check out ed.orgasteeb.com for the Phoenix Acoustic Wave penile restorative thing of a jig.

And it's, you know, clinically demonstrated to have a significantly statistical response in improving erectile dysfunction in men who don't have some neurologic deficit. So check that out at ed. Dottersteve.com. And Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. That's simply herbals.net with the best CBD nasal spray in the world as far as I'm concerned. And Tacey and I have a show on Patreon called Weird Medicine the Special Edition. Check out patreon.com slash weird medicine.

100% of phone calls that are called into that get answered. And a little bit different than the regular thing where I have a backlog of thousands of questions we've just never gotten to. And I'm sorry for that if we never did. I try to answer everybody in text message. I have failed in that regard sometimes too. But anyway, patreon.com slash weird medicine. We've had Pete Davidson on.

We had the Troika of Opian Anthony, Mark Norman, a Chad Zumach, and other folks like that. So it's been a fun thing. Oh, and Gino Bisconti, don't miss that one. Good Lord. You remember that taste?

That was fun. Gino is childlike without being childish. And he is very animated to say the least so check that out patreon.com slash weird medicine and then if you want me to say fluid to your daddy for father's day

doesn't quite have the ring of saying fluid to your mama but anyway if you want me to give your dad a father's day cameo I drop the price to five bucks just because I like doing them and all the proceeds go to

ham radio so oh my All of them. And when you do a $5 cameo, I get like three bucks. But, you know, it adds up. It adds up. My buddy Dale and I are saving up to create a moon bounce,

a ham radio setup where we can actually bounce signals off the moon and talk to people that way. I'm very excited about that. Oh, my God. It's amazing. All right, very good. Well, welcome back, Dr. Scott. Last week, you were under the weather. First time in how many years?

I've not answered a bell. That's been a long time. So you thought you had an adenavirus. Why did you think that and not, you know, the more typical thing? The C word. Yeah, the C word. Right. I just felt like it was a virus that shall not be named.

Yes. It was mostly sinus and headache and runny nose. Okay, so you're just making stuff up then? Pretty much. I mean, it could have been rhinovirus, right? Could have been rhinovirus. Yeah, it got down to my chest a little bit, but no color. We were talking about how now, because of COVID, we have these.

respiratory virus panels now that we never had before. When people would come into the hospital with a non-bacterial pneumonia, we would just say it was a, yeah, I would just go to say it's virus. Yeah, it's a virus, atypical pneumonia. Now they have these viral panels, and one of the viruses they're looking at is rhinovirus. It's just a cold. I mean, rhino meaning nose, it's a nose virus. Before COVID, it was a common cold. It was just a cold.

That's right. And so we had somebody come in and one of the remote hospitals, they were like, oh, you know, you better glove up and gown up and there because they've got rhinovirus. It's like, okay, just because it shows up on a lab test doesn't mean it's anything that we really need to be concerned about. I mean, I don't want to catch the guy's cold, so it's good to know. But it is, this is a new era. And this is the first step in fighting these fucking viruses. human pathologic viruses, this is the first step to finally pay attention to them. Now we notice you, and now we're going to come after you, and we are going to kill you.

Let's hope so. Yeah, we got to. Yeah, I felt a little rough, a little bit rough. I think that's just as important as cancer. I mean, human virus, you know, bird flu is one of those things that could really take out a bunch of people. Or Ebola somehow shifts. Yeah, if Ebola somehow shifts. shifts to where it's...

Doesn't kill you in, you know, the first 36 hours. That's right. That's right. Yeah, we like Ebola. I mean, we'd like it, but Ebola is reasonably workable because it's, it doesn't have asymptomatic carriers. And people are symptomatic quickly and they die quickly. And so you isolate that area. And, I mean, Nigeria really was one of the, um, the, um, the, uh, homework places that, you know, got an Ebola breakout and just dealt with it.

Yeah, she's, you know, and did a really good job, so, you know. What's interesting. Yep, yep, very good. All right, check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. That's simplyerbils.net. All right, and Tacey, do you have any topics today? Of course I do. Oh, boy, okay.

Well, here we go. It's Tacey's time. All right, just do it. It's fine. You don't need. Well, hello, everyone. You need the intro. I just really need to read.

do it. It's obnoxious. I love it. Yeah. Topic number one. Yes. Scientists find big cause of deadly pancreatic cancer. What? This is from No Ridge Science Report. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma or PDAC. 8% survive five years after diagnosis. That's a bad one. When genes and the cancer stem cells were studied, they found a protein called CD9. It was on the surface of the stem cells. This Protein could not act as a marker, but it also helps cancer stem cells behave in harmful ways. When changing the amount of CD9 in mice tumor cells, the tumors were formed smaller. Increasing CD9 made the cells more aggressive and large tumors formed quickly. Patients with higher levels of CD9 tend to have a worse outlook.

CD9 increases how fast cells take in glutamine, which helps the cancer. cancer grow. Oh. Cutting off glutamine is like starving the cancer. Hmm. So this gives them a target for future research. Which is very much needed. Absolutely it is.

Pancreatic cancer can kiss my ass, like all cancers. Yeah. But that one, we usually don't find out about it until it's pretty well advanced and that's the problem with it. Yeah. Yeah, that's actually very exciting. So what I'm looking at is the original article in, nature's

cellular biology, natural cellular biology. CD9 identifies pancreatic cancer stem cells and modulates glutamine metabolism to fuel tumor growth. So that's very exciting. Somebody's going to make a billion

dollars off of this by developing. Good. Heck yeah. Yeah, all power to them. It take away the terrible, terrible. That advantage. And if you just have the humanitarian advantage or, you know, altruistic outlook, you'll get it done eventually. It'll get done a lot faster if they can make a shitload of money off of it.

So anyway, very good taste. All right. Topic number two. This comes from Reuters.com. Okay. Bear says drug research focus will. Bear? No.

Smoky the bar? Suck it. Suck it. Did you understand that? Gentle Boone, killed a bar. A bar. Suck it no longer on women's health. Bayer makes Yasmin and Marina

birth control. Said it would still continue to pursue the development of non-hormonal menopausal symptoms. Oh, wow. Good for that. They have a compound called Ellen Zanitant as one of the foremost promising

pharmaceutical products. Again, you can suck it. The change is coming at the top for Bayer in June. CEO Bill Anderson will have to deal with lawsuits about Roundup Killer causing cancer. Underwhelming drug pipeline and investors are looking for a change. Bayer acquired sharing, which had a large women's health business, and they will now focus on oncology, cardiovascular disease, neurology, rare disease, and immunology, which I feel like is where all pharmaceutical companies are going.

Immunology, yeah. And rare disease. have gotten the short end of the stick in medical research for for ever decades you know it was a lot of times you know the medical schools were male particularly in the 50s and they published scientific articles based on male subjects even even if they were animal subjects they were very often male animals and they would you know you're you're going to ask questions that are interesting to you so that's why we have a pill, well, a pill.

We've got multiple pills and devices and shockwaves and all this stuff for men's erectile issues. And not so much for women's libidos because, you know, for them, you know, who cares, right? I mean, that's the way the scientist is going. That's what looks like that. That's right. Oh, God. Tacey's been watching the Dugger documentary. Documentary.

Good Lord. Oh, was it terrible. But anyway, yeah. And the thing is, we have to acknowledge this that certain diseases impact men and women very differently. There is a difference. And we have to start putting as much. We need a Title IX for medical research the same way we need it for sports back in the 60s and 70s. You know, to make sure that we are paying attention to diseases that affect women.

Now, one of the greatest advances, and we have to say that this is very important, is the Gardasil vaccine. Because we are seeing already, I mean, if you've ever seen cervical cancer, particularly in its late stages, in a young woman, it sucks. It's so bad. And the Gardasil vaccine, we're already seeing a reduction in. abnormal pap smears. And I'm convinced that in the next decade, we're going to see a huge drop off in deaths from cervical cancer. It's wonderful.

Because that vaccine, the gartersil is not that old, is it? 10 years? Yeah, I don't know when it came. I'll like that. The generation that got it in grade school are now getting pap smears and stuff. Yeah, look that up. She didn't care. All right.

Good one, Tase. Great one, Taze. Okay. Topic number three. Early heart attack symptoms miss the most often. This comes from the very scientific parade magazine. Okay. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S., and most commonly missed, shortness of breath, can occur with or without chest discomfort.

We're talking trouble breathing or dysphnea. I have trouble saying it. It's perfect. Dyspnea. Other commonly missed symptoms, chest pressure, upper abdominal pain, don't wait for left-sided chest pain. Right. Also pain in the shoulder, arm, neck, and your back or stomach, nausea, vomiting, heartburn,

dizziness, sweating, and fatigue. When my dad had his treadmill, this is way back before they had the nuclear treadmills that they do now, he just did a normal treadmill with an EKG, and all of a sudden they started seeing what we call ischemia, where there's one interval that starts to depress. And they were like, hey, you're having, you know, lack of blood going to the arteries in your heart and consequently to the heart muscle. And he said, well, that's weird. I'm not having any chest pain. I'm having pain in my left shoulder.

And I always thought it was arthritis when I was out on the golf course. So he's out on the golf course having angina, you know, heart pain and thinking it's just arthritis because he didn't present like a textbook. The textbook presentation for hurt attack is left-sided chest pain radiating to the left arm with shortness of breath, palpitations, nausea, and sweating, or what we call diaphresis. Almost nobody presents that way. When they do, it's easy. So really, you could almost have a 12-year-old train to pick that up if somebody comes in that way. It's the ones that present like Tacey is talking about where they don't present in a textbook fashion. But what is almost always true, Tase, is these symptoms are associated with exertion.

So I go up the stairs and all of a sudden I'm having shortness of breath every time. Or I walk up the stairs and I'm sweating or I get nauseated, something like that. If it's associated with activity and it's reproducible, it's very likely, well, it's likely that you need to see somebody to get a work. Make sure it's not your heart. Yeah. Yep. Okay. I believe my aunt, she was having a widower and her main symptom was nausea and vomiting.

Yeah. So she went to the doctor and, of course, they did not catch it. Yeah, well, you won't. I've told the story on this show multiple times of the guy that got triaged for. from the emergency room because he came in saying he had a sore throat. And what it really was, he was having a heart attack and the pain was radiating up into his neck. And he, if he had said, I have neck pain, maybe, maybe they would have, but probably not even then. If he said, I'm having neck pain with shortness of breath, you know, that started when I was exerting myself,

maybe they would have caught it. But, you know, they put him in a room and pulled the curtain and we'll get. to you in a little bit because they thought he had strep throat or something and walked in and he was gone. So. So, also the lesson on that is when you go into

the emergency room, be as a specific as you can, don't minimize your symptoms. Tell them everything. Okay. Yeah. So I didn't think it was right to talk about symptoms without talking about prevention.

Okay. And these are pretty, you know, calm. commonly known. But, you know, healthy weight, physically active, eating healthy, not smoking, don't drink too much, sleep seven to nine hours a night. Yes, Dr. Steve. And manage your stress, I know. Fuck off.

Fuck off with managing stress and sleep. No, your blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar. Okay. So just take it, you can't just take a cholesterol pill in your heart's magically healthy. I think it involves stress reduction. Dr. Steve. Sleep, hygiene, Dr. Steve. Lord, I'm lady.

Do you back. True, though. True, that. True that. Now, this one is for... This is not a morning zoo, you guys. This one is just kind of for the morons out there. Uh-oh.

The morons? Worst habits for blood sugar. Okay. Okay. So carbs. Eating cake. Stress. eating refined sugars

because it causes spikes in blood glucose levels, causing a stress response in the body, which causes a snowball of poor sleep, anxiety, and more. And more, not moi. Could I eat an apple pie? If I got the sugar...

Oh, apple pie sounds so good right now. If I got the sugar, it's a good taste. Avoid desserts, white bread, white flour, sugary beverages, coffee with syrups or sugar and high fructose Corn syrup. They say pie r squared, but that ain't right. Pie around.

Oh, my God. Dad jokes. That's terrible. I thought it wasn't a morning zoo. Yeah, I was going to say, he just added to it. I'm doing the guy doing the weird character and Scott making weird noises and Tacey screaming true dad. Maybe we could do a morning show.

I was going to say, I think, I don't think we're good enough for that. Oh, get out of here. Have you heard some of the shit that's out there? It takes me a little while to get going to the morning. It'd be like a 10, 11 a.m. Oh, they just yak, and they say, and they have the contests, you know. Ooh, which topping do you like best on your ice cream? Call in, and we'll, shut the fuck off.

Who cares? Yes, exactly. Whatever you want on your. Who cares? Hot fudge or hot caramel? Or hot shit? No, we're not doing this. The whole point is that's a hack.

shitty bit. You two are over there going, well, wait a minute, I do like hot flage. Well, now that you mention it, Dr. All right. All right, what else got, Tase? That's it. What else do you want me to have? My God. Give myself a bell.

Suck it. No, those were good. Just because she did her homework to get the bell. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. That's exactly right. Dr. Scott, she did her homework, so she gets a bell. All right.

Hey, Dr. Steve, D.N.P. Carissa, Scott, and Taisley. D&P. Carissa will be back in, I think, two weeks. Cool. I think next week, P.A. Liddy will be here, and then D.N.P. Chris will be back. I would have a two-parter here, and I'll let you pause between the two. Okay. Well, thank you. You explain the difference between tolerance, dependency, and addiction.

Yeah. And then here's my second one. Okay, that's the first one. Pause. Sure. Well, I mean, any of us can talk about this. So tolerance is just a phenomenon that, and it's not just applicable to opioids, but it could be lots of other drugs, that over time you need an increasing amount of the drug

to produce the same effect. And it is classically seen in opioid analgesics, heroin, heroin. oxycodone, those things where you have to take increasing doses over time to still get the same effect. Now, there is a weird one, methadone, the de-isomer of methadone. So methadone has a right-handed molecule and a left-handed molecule. It just has to do with how the molecules are made, and there are mirror images of each other. the D, the right-handed molecule, blocks a receptor called N-methyl deaspartate. Don't worry about what that is.

But when you antagonize that receptor, tolerance goes away. For some reason, the body continues to be responding to the same doses of medication. So we can throw D-Methadone at people and they stop having to increase. their opioid dose for their chronic pain. Or you can just use methadone. You know, a lot of people, I've had on methadone five milligrams three times a day for 10 years for neuropathic pain or whatever. So it's pretty interesting.

So that's tolerance. Now, addiction is, I mean, there's medical definitions of it, but addicts tend to lie, cheat and steal to get their medication. They take it for non-medical use. right they'll take it beyond the point where it's doing them harm and when they stop taking the drug they will go through withdrawal and if it's an opioid the only now dependence is another thing if you get somebody who has cancer and you've they've had cancer pain you run up their dose of opioids over time and then you cure their cancer and then they stop their medication Now, they didn't lie, cheat, or steal. They were taking it for a medical purpose. They weren't taking it beyond the point it was causing them harm.

And they didn't crave it. But what they did have was withdrawal because they stopped their medicine too quickly. Is that habituation? People use these words differently. I always called that habituation. Some people say habituation addiction are synonymous, but dependence is the word that, you know, that's the distinction this person. is making between dependence that person is dependent on it meaning if they stop it suddenly

they'll go through withdrawal and so the answer to that is don't stop it suddenly if you're if you're a cancer patient you're getting your medicine from a palliative medicine person they should be tapering it i'll taper people over three months sometimes i don't care how long it takes as long as we're going in the right direction and the patient gets a nice soft landing because they don't deserve after going through cancer treatment and they get their cancer cured and they had horrible pain and now their pain is gone, they don't deserve to go through withdrawal. So I don't care how long it takes as we're going in the right direction.

Yep. Okay. Totally agree. All right. That was one of his question. Questions, comments? No. I understand that addiction is in your genes.

But why can't they study somebody like me who was on Valium for years and just stop taking it one day and stoma for years just stopped taking it one day yeah I don't know dude 200 milligrams of cadian twice a day and 85 milligrams of oxycatin

okay cadian is a long acting morphine it's you just take it once a day so he was taking did he say 85 of cadian that's a quick I thought it said of oxy no okay hang on

and 85 milligrams of oxycaton okay okay wait a minute oxycodone 200 milligrams Acadian twice a day Wow So he was taking 400

milligrams of extended release morphine That is 40 Lortab 10s Just to give everybody context You know if I say 1600 morphine Milligram equivalents

Nobody understands what I'm talking about Except another pain person But if I say that's equivalent to 160 Lortab tens Everybody goes oh okay I get that All right So let's see and then he was taking...

And 85 milligrams of oxycutton throughout the day and just stopped taking it one day. So 85, okay, let's say he was taking 90 milligrams of oxycodone. That's equivalent to 13 and a half Lortab 10s. So he was taking 40, so 53 and a half Lortab 10 equivalents during the day. And I'm not saying that I didn't have a... physical symptoms of, you know, shit my brains out for a couple of days, but I never felt the need to want to take it again.

Like, why can't they study my genes? Well, they should. I think that's how we learn things, is you find the outliers that have a trait that you want and you see why it is. Obviously, it's genetic because everything is, but he may have an enzyme or some receptor that allows him to start and stop these medications. without, with impunity, most people aren't like that. Right.

I think they should study him. He should write a letter to a university center that's doing research on addictionology and say, hey, you guys want to get my blood, see, you know, get some. Or your stool or whatever. Yeah. Or gut microbiome. Right. It could be.

Who the hell knows? They should study the hell out of this guy. They should put a thing out, you know, a bulletin out saying, if you're like that, come see us. Yeah. Yeah. Wouldn't that be incredible things? And then they need to confirm it.

So they need to get them hepped up on opioids and then stop it suddenly and see what happens. See if he shits his pants for three days, like he said. Well, that is one of the symptoms is diarrhea. But the interesting thing is his withdrawal symptoms were physically, but he didn't have the mental component of really wanting him breaking him, going back and starting them again. I wonder what made him quit. I wonder what is on all that stuff for in the first place.

You know, chronic low back pain or something. Didn't he say it was in an accident or something? And, yeah, maybe he just didn't need it anymore. You know, I'm a weirdo because, I mean, you've seen my back. I've posted it on the Internet before. It is a nightmarish scenario. It looks like something straight out of hellraiser. And I, you know, the guy offered me opioids, and I was like, hell no.

Mainly because I understood that that's a dead end. And opioids are a dead end for chronic non-malignant pain for the most part. Now, the chronic pain people out there that are on opioids, God bless you. I'm not saying that you don't need them. Some people do. But I knew it would be a dead end for me, and it is a dead end for a lot of people. And, you know, I did non-opioid things, and I'm no longer crawling up the stairs like I was. Well, you did interventional things other than just.

I did. That's what I'm saying, but I did no opioids. I did interventional stuff. Did you respond to, thankfully, yeah. Two epidurals and two facet joint ferraminal injections where they take a big old needle and a C-arm. A C-arm is basically an x-ray that you can move around the central axis. And this guy, my doctor, is a genius, and he can move that C-arm around until he lines up all the whole. that he wants to line up in your spine because there's all kinds of little nooks and crannies.

He can line them all up and then he just takes a needle and puts her right in there. And you can watch the medicine go into the joint space and see that it's right there. It's right exactly where it needs to be. And when you get somebody like that, those kinds of shots really help. I mean, the first one lasted six weeks. The next one lasted a month. But the next two that he did where he did the ones right at the nerve route, that was two years. ago, I think. Wasn't it taste? It's been

a while. I mean, I lost my handicap placard to my chagrin, to be honest with you. But it's good. I don't want to lose my integrity by using a handicaps placard when I don't need it, but it was awfully

tempting. But I lost it and I was in my office one day and this guy was in there with a shitty cane and he was having trouble walking. I said, just hang on a second. And I went and got in my highfalutin, fancy wood cane and gave it to him. He was really happy. And I was happy to be able to just give it away.

So it can be done. And this guy did it too, you know, whatever. And he got off of it easy. I just never got on it in the first place. Anyway, I'm not like Dr. Agus who says, oh, no chronic back pain person needs medication. That's bullshit. That's because he hadn't seen some of the shit we've seen probably. Well, I don't know what the hell is up with him.

He wrote this book where you just don't need, you know, he's arguing that nobody needs any pain medicine for back pain. But I did physical therapy. I did the epidurals. I did, you know, I took gabapentin, which turned the nerves down a little bit. You told me to get rid of that damn back the, my inverter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was making it worse. It seemed like it made it better.

So I bought an inversion table. And for me, as long as I was on it, upside down, I felt pretty good. But as soon as I got up, everything was just smashing back together again. So I gave it to lady diagnosis. So she can deal with it. Yeah, she can do with it. I think those things are really good for some people. If you want to see what I'm talking about, go to stuff.

Dot, Dr.steve.com and just scroll down. You know, the biggest was take a lot of folks do with it. They just tilt it back too far, where if you only go maybe 20 degrees. No, you see, that's the whole. flipping upside down. Oh, yeah, the whole thing is you've got an inversion table. You want to hang upside down. Yeah, but you're over cooking it, though, buddy.

Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. All right, very good. Hi, my name is Mike. I've got this issue with wiping. I've got a question. About a year ago, I started having this problem where it seemed like I could never wipe enough. It was always greasy and muddy down there. It seems like it would just, the wiping went on forever.

So I started using, like, those rolls of blue shop towels to wipe, and I would spray them down with some rubbing alcohol. No, no, no, no. It was the only thing that would give me a clean sensation down there. Yeah. So basically, I was wondering, like, is there a chance that I might be making this situation worse because it hasn't gotten any better? All he's doing is making me feel temporarily clean until the next bowel movement. And I'm wondering, like, is there, am I, like, killing any bacteria? that's, you know, whose job is to, like, soften up the extra grease

by using this alcohol or, and basically, should I stop doing this? Yeah, you should. I'm going to finish his call here because there's a little bit more to it. But what he's doing is taking away the oils, essential oils, from the skin around his rectum. I've seen people who did what he did, and they end up getting this thickened, red skin in their ass crack that is, you can't even describe it as skin anymore. It's like plastic, kind of. It gets so irritated.

What he's doing is he's irritating it to the point where he's losing his natural defense in that area. And so there'll be chronic inflammation there over time. Let me see. And I'm going to tell them what to do instead. I don't know if this is good or not. I've never heard of anyone doing it, and I've never seen anything. There's a reason. About anyone else doing it, and I'm just wondering if I'm, you know, if this might have worked it out, if this might have worked itself out if I hadn't.

No, it wouldn't have worked itself out. You probably have a hairy ass crack. And we've used this analogy before. Just imagine taking Vaseline and dumping it on a bare rug and then trying to wipe it up with newspaper. That's basically what you're doing when you're trying to get fecal matter. out of the matted hair on your ass crack. And it's very difficult to get things clean down there. Plus, there may be some just a little bit still up in the rectum that's working its way out

because we don't seem to evacuate completely in this country because we don't need enough fiber. So first thing, eat more fiber. Second thing, drink more water. Third thing, Tacey, get a. A bidet. A bidet, very good. Okay. Give myself a bill.

Oh, wait a minute. No, that's not cheap, man. Yeah, get yourself a bidet. Now, I messaged him and said, get a bidet. He said, I'm on the road all the time. Won't work. Guess what? What about the wipes?

Well, guess what? I'm not a fan of the wipes either because you're still rubbing against your ass crack. Get a portable bidet. Tushy makes one that is not mechanical. It's very cheap. It just looks like one of those douche bottles that you use after you deliver a baby. I don't like that one. I like the blow, B-L-E-A-U-X.

It's battery-powered, and it's small. You carry it with you. You fill it up. You fill up the reservoir with warm water before you sit down to defecate. and then you pop out this little arm on it and you, after you're done, you stick it between your legs and you push the button and it bedaes your ass.

And then it will completely clean all of the debris. And, you know, as... The loose matter. As Harrison Young said when I was on his show, all the grit. He says, I want some grit in there. It's like, I don't want grit in my ass crack. So, and shit is washing.

Water soluble. And if you will just, you put this thing between your legs, hit the button, and just go until all the water's gone. And then all you have to do is pat yourself dry. And if you get a tushy bidet for your home, that one has enough power. You're basically giving yourself a mini anima if you aim it just right. You know, and they're like $69. Go to stuff. Dot, Dr.steve.com and scroll down and this stuff is there.

Yeah. Okay. That is literally the answer. They do not have these problems in countries that have bidets in every bathroom. Now, some of them have the separate bidet. I don't want that. I don't want to get up with... A separate, like the place you have to sit?

Yeah. It's next to the toilet and you get up with shit on your ass and then you go over and you sit on this other thing and then turn it on. It seems weird to me. Now, maybe it's just because I'm not used to it. But it's wide open. So it looks to me like there would be stuff in the bomb of it when you've done. I don't want that. Just get the one that's attached to the bidet.

Now, what Daisy and I did, we were such fans that we got the MOWEN, M-O-E-N, makes a bidet toilet seed. And don't get the one you've got to plug into the wall unless you just have to have warm water. You get used to it. I kind of like the cold water, you know, the regular temperature water. Yeah, it is. And the moan, it doesn't have the pressure that the Tushy does, but it is integrated into the toilet seat, and it's less likely if you lean on it or something to break. And we put it on every toilet in the house, even the guest bathroom downstairs. I don't know if anybody's ever used it.

But we are bidet fans. Yes, yes, yes. And I have, I cannot stand to not have it now, so I take my blow. even when we go on vacation or when I go on my trips to, you know, Rochester and stuff like that for the WATP stuff. I'd take it with me. All right. All right.

All right. Here we go. Let's try this one. Tase. Hi, Dr. Steve. I have a question. I actually asked my doctor, the surgeon, about it. And he kind of just giggled at me.

Giggled. Everyone in you go off has giggled. They laughed. What? I'm going to ask because I mentioned Gray's Anatomy, but I am having a total new replacement. Okay. If you mentioned Gray's Anatomy, no one's going to take you very seriously. That was the most unrealistic show when it came to medical training.

I mean, first thing, all the interns are like 40 years old. I mean, how old Ellen Pompeo, I don't know how old she is now, but she can't still be a resident. I mean, I haven't watched it in ages. And if I found a bunch of residents hanging around socializing in the room of a patient that was in a coma, number one, you don't just keep comatose patients in the hospital just on and on and on when they're not on life support. Remember that? There was that person that had a coma. And they would just go in there and socialize and stuff and flirt and stuff.

They would all be fired. Yes. You would rip them a new ass. That is really It's disrespectful and unprofessional and not okay in any way But anyway So that might be why they giggled But let's see why he brought it up

On next Thursday And June 15th And stupid is as it sounds I've watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy Where this guy Was having like Showing signs of of, um, he couldn't remember where, who he was, where he was.

Oh, yeah. Like Alzheimer's, um, or dementia, whichever. Um, anyway, it comes to, you know, after the end of the episode, it said it was a cobalt, a reaction to the cobalt that was in his knee. I asked the doctor, what is the, uh, what metal is in me, I'm getting to be made up. And he said, cobalt. I said, you know, I saw on, um, um, on Grey's Anatomy that Cobalt, people have allergic reaction to it that kind of looks like Alzheimer's.

And they just giggled. They didn't really answer my question. Yeah, I don't know. So it's true that people do get allergic or are allergic to Cobalt, and it does cause symptoms like that. Okay, listen. Listen, I don't know from Cobalt. memory loss is a complication for many people after

total joint replacement surgery and it is you know there's I'm looking at JAMA network right now a long-term cognitive trajectory after total joint orthoplasty people have poor concentration impaired attention

or executive function and you know but these are these tend to be people that are 80 and from the anesthesia not from the, not from the joint or from some kind of allergic reaction. Is there cobalt in titanium?

So I was going to say, I'll let you finish but I'll talk about. I'm done. I don't know. Yeah, so I have seen a number of folks that have been allergic to different kind of total joints and have infusions, which it could be cobald, it could be the titanium, it could be nickel, whatever it is.

But I've seen everything from the neck, you know, from like ACDF, so when somebody has a fusion in their neck to having actual total knees completely redone taken out and put in a new type of knee? Yes. I've seen that. But that has nothing

to do with the memory. The memory thing is typically associated with older adults in the anesthesia. I mean the cobalt's in all kinds of stuff. And apparently one in 20 people in the United States are worldwide are allergic

to cobald. But it's in all kinds of environmental stuff, you know. So I don't, that's interesting. Yeah, it's people of cobalt allergy have allergy to nickel and chromium,

which are closely related. And 15% of people are allergic to these metal allergens. But, yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, it can be, cobalt isn't responsible in

part for production of B-12, so that, you know, maybe they end up with a B-12 deficiency. I don't know. That's it. I don't know what the hell Gray's Anatomy was talking about. I'll tell you what, Google, Gray's Anatomy, Cobalt allergy, and just see if anything interesting comes up, because that is a very strange one. But I do know that a lot of those shows will go, and House would do this, too. they would go for a very, they would find something that was insanely rare and then make a whole show about it. So we'll come back to that one.

Yep. All right. Let's try this one. Hey, Dr. Steve. I've been listening for a while since my husband got me hooked on your show, but calling for the first time. Excellent. So I'm a question about allergies. I'm a 38-year-old and I have been a long-time allergy suffer, you know, pretty much my whole life.

basically everything environmental that blooms in every season here where I live in Alabama, dust mold, if it's got fur or some kind of dander, I'm allergic to it. I started allergy shots last year, but I'm also taking over-the-counter meditations on bad days. And so bad days, if I have an attack, it's, you know, the sneezing, itchy, watery eyes, itchy face. And Benadryl is the only thing that gives me immediate relief, but it knocks me out, even if I just take like a half. And so I'm wondering if you knew of anything that might work just as powerfully as Benadryl, but doesn't make me fall asleep as soon as I take it. I appreciate you and Dr. Scott so much. Take care.

But not Tacey, though. No. because she likes She likes a barge Briars Yeah So I'll talk about Allopathic stuff

And you can talk about Non-Alopathic stuff Number one Go get yourself a Navaj The Navage Is a saline Nasal A nasal irrigator

Tacey has one And I Bought her one When she was desperate and it was a win because, well, do you tell them? I could breathe after, and it felt like concrete in my head. Yeah. So, but I could breathe after I did it.

And it washes out the allergen, so you quit making that allergen and, you know, histamine release so that you have to take an antihistamine. That's what Benadryl is. The problem with Benadryl is it is also highly what we call anticholinergic, and it doesn't matter so much for this show what that means. But what it does is it gives you dry mouth, it makes you sleepy, and it increases your risk of dementia long term, too, if you take it every day. So we're not big fans of the anticholinergic stuff. And if you're an elderly male and you take Benadryl, it can cause you to not be able to urinate. So I recommend the non-drowsy

antihistamines. She didn't mention Monty Luke has. I said she's not trying that. Give myself a bell. Oh, did you hear that, Scott? Oh, for God. That's where I was going. That's what I get from missing a week. So the over-the-counter stuff, Navaj, Flonase, nasal steroids.

You can get Dr. Scott's nasal rinse. It has, and you can get that at simply herbals.net. Seriously, it has, he has two of them, one with CBD, one without, but it has peppermine oil in it, which is a direct anti-inflammatory for mucus membranes, you can do all of those things. And if that doesn't do, a non-drowsy antihistamine like fexophenidine, which is sold under the brand name Allegra, and Flonase, which is Fluticazone, is a nasal steroid. If that doesn't do it, then your prescriber might be able to write you Monte Lucast, which is what Tacey was alluding to. It's also known as singular. And for some people, if it works, it's like magic.

If it doesn't work, it just doesn't work. But for the people that does work on it, it's great. Now, be careful. I've prescribed that stuff for probably 35 years, and we had one case of a kid who was put on it, and it was a friend of ours, who they thought he was autistic. And he didn't connect, and he didn't, you know, he threw fits and all this kind of stuff. and they really thought he was autistic. They, at some point, I'm not even sure how they came to this, but he'd been on Monty Lucas, his whole life.

They took him off of it, and all of a sudden his developmental delay just went away. Now, he was delayed because he was delayed, but he's moving so much faster and getting, you know, basically a normal kid now. So be careful with all prescription medications and just be aware of the adverse effects. That's a one in some X,000

where people have a problem with that. But we see crazy things with some antibiotics. Yes. You know, the fluoroquinolones, like levoquin, people just throw those out for this, that, and the other. And every once I had a friend who went psychotic. Oh, wow. And it took them a minute to figure out

it was the fluoroquinoline at this. they were taking. They just thought that they'd gone crazy and paranoid and hearing voices and, you know, threatening people and stuff like that. Stop the antibiotic and went away. Now, what's the other weird one? Scott, you should know this with Leveiquin or Fluoroquinone. Oh, tearing Achilles tendons. Give thyself a bell. Did you get one? That is true. You can somehow weaken the Achilles tendon. And people have been known to be taking that antibiotic and get a rupture of the tendon in their ankle.

So the back of their ankle. All right? Yep. Very good. Try that stuff. Well, you let me tell her real quick a couple of things. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry.

No, it's okay. It's okay. It's straggal us. No. And I'm with Dr. Steve, first of all. Try to wash the credit out of your head. I like the navage. I love this simply herbal nasal spray.

The other thing is in Chinese herbology, we have some really wonderful medications that work extremely well for allergies, which is what I take, and one of them is called xanthium. Just find somebody that practices. Zanthium. Yeah. It's just a flower, but it's a mixture of other herbs, and it works extremely ill for allergies. With no side effects, it doesn't make you drowsy. Just find somebody that does some herbal medicines.

In your area, they may have something, some kind of magic. Magic. Wow, they don't like magic. Hey, listen, if he makes those allergies better, you take whatever you can take. That's true. But, you know, and sadly, the other thing, is sometimes, you know, people just have to move to a less pollen-filled environment. Yeah.

She might have to move to the beach. When I go to the beach, my allergies go away. Magically disappear. Yeah. She's wonder how that happens. Yeah. Well, you're washing your sinuses out. No, but I mean.

And salt, well, the salt water air. When you get in there in the wind, you know, the wind at the beach also keeps stuff, seems to just keep you from inhaling. Antigens because the breeze tends to come. from over the water. Yep. Do we know why that happens? Why is there always a wind at the beach?

Because there's no trees to block that. Bullshit. Now when... It's called the trade winds. That is part of it, though. So I'll give you some credit for that. But you have heat rising over the sand. I mean, heat, you know,

heating the air over the sand. And so that air around. rises, and as it rises, it's got to be replaced by air from somewhere else, so the cooler air over the ocean will take its place. And so you'll get wind that generally comes from the direction of the ocean. That's why you can always fly your kite behind where you're sitting. And that's our geography lesson for the day. Well, that would be meteorology lesson.

Oh, would it now? Yes, yes. All right. Let's see. Here's a good one. Hi, Dr. Steve. I have a question that does not involve COVID-Dick's or. Balls.

Ooh. Oh, okay. Next. I don't want to hear it. Next question. I find myself allergic to just about every antibiotic there is, and I'm starting to get a little nervous about it. I have anaphylactic reactions with both penicillin and cephalosporin drugs.

The deoxy cycling gives me a terrible migraine, and one of my go-tos, which would be like the Z-Pack. Recently, I had a terrible adverse reaction to that, even though I had taken it in the past. So my question is, as a doctor, what would you do with a patient like me? Okay, we're running out of time, but I can tell you exactly what I would do. If you had a, let's just say you had acinidobacter, infection in your bowel, and the only thing that would treat it is penicillin. We would do a desensitization protocol on you. There is a specific protocol where you basically give somebody a little bit, then you give them a little bit more.

And what you're doing is you're eating up all those antibodies, the IGEA antibodies that cause anaphylaxis. And you're eating them up in small doses and you keep increasing and increasing. It takes several hours to do. And then I would give you the antibiotic. And I could give you the antibiotic as long as you don't stop it, you can continue to take it. This doesn't cure your allergy. It just allows you to take the antibiotic in an emergency situation, and then if you take it, let's say, for a month, then you go off of it for two days, you're going to have anaphylaxis again. So that part, we don't have the ability to fix just yet, but we can desensitize you.

So if you get something that's horrendous that has to be treated with one of those antibiotics, then we can. do that. Now, as far as the scary stuff, there are other types of drugs. There are meripenum. There's aminoglycosides. There's all kinds of different classes of drugs that you probably can take. You just haven't because they are

IV only. And yeah, if you get a cold, you're going to be one of the good patients that says, I don't want an antibiotic for this, because antibiotics don't treat colds. They treat bacteria. And most people who get

antibiotics for an upper respiratory infection, I actually don't need them. So that's good. You won't be contributing to antibiotic resistance and all that kind of BS. All right. All right. Well, anyway, what have we done today? We talked about allergies. We talked about cobalt allergy.

A lot of allergies. Yeah, what a allergy. Tasey's time of topics. That's right. We've done it all. Greasy ass, baby. And greasy ass? Yeah, bedaies.

Get a bidet. Go to Dr. Steve.com or stuff.com and pick yourself out of a bidet. All right. And before we get out of here, Dr. Scott, you had a question from the fluid

family. Yes, this is from Mark. Martin wants to know, why is my body resistant to all pain medications, including narcotics and opioids, tried every possible one, terrible sciatica pain with no relief

possible waiting for an MRI. Okay. So, I have an answer for that. Number one, everybody's different. But number two, some pains are not opioid sensitive. Right. And what, I don't know if they started on, say, hydrocodone 5 and then went, oh, let's go to oxycodone 5 and then let's go to hydromorphone 2. I see this a lot.

This is sort of a bullshit approach to pain where some of my colleagues will just start, rotate people to different low-dose medications and wonder why they don't work. It's just not enough. Yeah, right. It's just not enough. But low back pain, particularly sciatica pain, tends to be neuropathic pain. It's caused by a pinched nerve in the back. And opioids...

Opioids are really not great for that. And there are just different pains that, you know, vulvar pain is not very sensitive to opioids. So, yeah, there are just some that don't work. And so we need to do something else, once you... Well, I was going to say after an MRI to roll out anything really, you know, kind of ugly. You know, what we'd like to do is a couple things. A, ice, you know, B, heat, something else from the exterior that might help a little bit. Tens units can help certainly. Acupunctures can help a little bit. But the next step is going to probably be an epidural. Yep. Tell them what that is.

Well, that's why it's so important. Because we talked about it earlier. It's so vital to get an MRI. In order to have an epidural or a facet, an epidural, they're going to take a big needle and run a steroid into the spinal canal. And they're going to, and what that does is that kind of lines the inner column of the spinal canal with steroids and reduces the swelling inside. Yeah. They don't actually go into where the spinal fluid is. That's why it's epitur.

You're going around the dura, which is, but you're getting very close. Yeah, yeah. I'll say, yeah, you don't actually puncture the dula. and going to the core itself. Yeah, it's in the canal. But what they'll do in a lot of cases, especially if, because, you know, sciatic is a very complicated thing sometimes, but if it's a discogenic sciatic and you have like a complete failure of a disc, you're going to need a steroid probably that might help some

and maybe some gabapent like you were going to, I would assume you were going to say. Which may help some with the neuropathic pain. But in a lot of cases, physical therapy. Physical therapy and some traction sometimes, you know, and even sometimes those little tables can help. But, you know, if it's bad enough, sometimes really the only treatment is going to be some sort of a surgery, some kind of surgical intervention.

Whereas if it's more of a stenosis, just a nearing of the canal, the steroids might help wonderfully well. So maybe it's just, was not the right medication, right approach. Right. Not because somebody did something wrong. I had all of the above. Yeah, they need your MRI.

I have spondylolisthesis, which means that the vertebral bodies are not stacked on top of each other properly. And when they're not, when the one is kind of offset, 50%. Shifted forward typically. Right. Then all of the little holes where the nerves are supposed to go through are made more narrow. And the crazy thing is the body can adjust to that if you give it time.

And the steroids helped to decrease the swelling around there, so it took off the pressure. But my body just had to eventually just adjust to this. Now, I have pain every day, and my foot is numb a lot of times. but it doesn't affect my quality of life. I can sit and watch a movie. I can walk. I feel like right now I could go to Disney World and walk like we used to do, you know, eight, ten miles a day without any trouble.

I might have to sit down more. But I'm still, I'm back to walking in the hospital faster than my interns can keep up with me. It's like, why walk slow? We got shit to do. Yeah. Anyway. Get it going. All right.

You got anything else? That's a good one. I hope you feel better, man. And keep us in the loop, okay? Let us know how you're doing, for real. Many thanks go to Dr. Scott. And how about some thanks to Tacey as well. Yeah.

I appreciate you. You got you won on the bell thing today. Thanks to everyone who made this show happen over the years and listen to our Sirius XM show on the Faction Talk Channel, Sirius 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, Dr. Steve.com for schedules, podcasts, and other crap. And don't forget stuff.doctorsteve.com and simply

herbals.net for all of your online shopping needs. 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 addition to weird medicine. Thanks everybody. Goodbye. Bye guys.