Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 560 - WTF With Sildenafil?

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

Dr Steve, Dr Scott, Tacie discuss: Tacie gets her permit Male pattern baldness New lung cancer treatment New diabetes interventions Giant ball of ear wax Does THC affect the liver the way alcohol does? "Saturday Night Palsy" Where does "weight" go when you lose it? WTF with sildenafil? 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 because he's 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

Why did the Dust Bunny fall in love with a Roomba? It was swept off its feet. What's faster than the speed of light? The speed of your dad saying, Turn off the lights. What happened to the cat who ate a ball of yarn? She had mittens. If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve,

host of Weird Medicine on Sirius XM 103, 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 in? Entitled to! I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Zabola Vibes stripping from my nose.

I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my imbettable woes. I want to take my brain out and blast with the wave, an ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsating shave. I want a magic pill. All my ailments, the health equivalent of citizen cane. And if I don't get it now in the tablet,

I think I'm doomed, then I'll have to go insane. I want to requiem for my denials. 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 of broadcast

radio, now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my little panel, Dr. Scott, and the and Tacey. Yeah, whatever. Dr. Scott is a traditional Hi, everyone. It's a traditional Chinese medical practitioner who gives me street red with the wack

alternative medicine assholes. And Tacey is my partner in all things. Hello, Daisy. What? What's going on? This is a show for people who never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet.

You've got a question, you're embarrassed to take your regular medical provider if you can't find an answer anywhere else. Give us a call. 347766432. That's 347.

Pooh-Head. Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine or at D.R. Scott W.M. Visit our website at Dr.steve.com from podcast, medical news and stuff you can buy.

Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Taking everything you hear with a grain of salt, and act on anything you hear on this show without talking it over with your health care provider. Please don't forget stuff.doctrsteve.com, stuff dot, dr.steve.com for all of your shopping needs. I checked out the link. It still works. And I took off some stuff that was, you know, just broken links and stuff in there.

So go check out. Stuff.com. You can still get pre-order on the Rodee coach. Okay. R-O-A-D-I-E coach, and so it's rhodi. Dottersteep.com, or you can just go to stuff dot Dr. Steve, scroll down and look at it. The Rode coach is not a tuner this time,

but something that will teach you how to play your instrument. If it's going to help me, it'd be really good. Well, we'll see. We'll see. They're selling this one. I thought it would be better for you to have it than for me. So we'll try it. I need to help.

And then check out Dr. Scott's website. It's simplyerbils.net and check out Tacey and me at patreon.com slash weird medicine. It's all different content, all fun content. It's all Tacey giving me down the road for saying this. It's fun. It is fun. It's actually, it's a good show. And 100% of your phone calls that are sent to the Patreon address get addressed on the Patreon show.

So that's patreon.com slash Weird Medicine. And I did a couple of cameos for Father's Day. You know, I'll do whatever. I don't care. It's $5. Who cares? It's basically nothing. And I get three of that.

Thank you. But it all goes toward ham radio. And I'll say whatever basically you want. I'll say fluid to your mama or, you know, whatever. So one person... It's all about the daddy this weekend. That's right. But, yeah, one person wanted me to tell his dad,

make sure he got another cystoscopy. And I said, yeah, make sure that you have this tube jammed up there so you can feel like you're pissing razor blades for a week. So that was a little bit of a personal one for Dr. Scott and me. But anyway. Yep. All right, you got anything else? Nope.

Let's get into it. Don't forget to check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. That's simplyerbils.net. I think somebody hijacked your URL last week. Oh, wow. Because I would go to simplyerbils. dot net and it took me to something called simply herbal naturals. Do you know

those people? No. Those are the ones that tried to sue you? No, no, no. But I got on there after you did, I think it's... And then it was fine. Yeah, it was on several different computers and they were doing a redirect to the wrong simply herbal. So if anybody had a problem with

that, try it again. It seems to be fixed. Yes, please. All right. Yeah, thanks, Dr. Okay. Okay. Tacey, you have some topics? Of course I do. Oh, I do. Oh, I don't. Say, of course, I do. It's Tacey's time of topics. A time for Tacey to discuss topics of the day.

Not to be confused with topic time with Harrison Young, which is copyrighted by Harrison Young and Area 58 Public Access. And now, here's Tacey. Well, hello, everyone. First of all, fucking gun class today. Oh, yeah, we should probably. I now have an enhanced gun carry permit. Yes, you do. And hate, hate, H-A-T-E guns.

Hate them. Do you? To the point where I almost cried during the part where we were shooting. And I thought I failed the test, which, by the way, if you ever want to get a gun, Tennessee wants you to have one. They certainly do they do. Because they, it could not be easier. The distractors.

One of the distractors, it said, what was that thing? It said, what is this thing, this license that you're going for called? And one of the distractors was correct, which was Tennessee advanced, you know, carry permit or whatever. And then one of the distractors was a concealed machine gun permit. And, you know, I'm really, they said that some people have failed. the test, but I don't know how in the world they could possibly do that, unless they just didn't speak English and they were just doing

it at random. They do want you to have it, don't they? It was the very least fun I've had in a very long time. Okay, why did you do it? I did it for Father's Day for Steve. Thank you. Thank you. We'd been talking about it for

over 20 years. Had I done it a long time ago, I probably wouldn't have gotten so upset, but I was just in a way today, I guess. One thing you don't like is to not feel fully able to display your full

aspect. In other words, you don't like it when you're put in a situation where you don't exactly know how to do something. Didn't know how to do not a fucking thing. So, but now you came out of there that instructor was very patient with her. You have to shoot 50 rounds. 20 at 5,

20 at 10, no, 20 at 7, no, 3, 5, and 7 is what it is. Yards, so 9 feet, 15 feet, and 21 feet. And he had a, like a Ruger 22 pistol. And she learned how to load the magazine, which I didn't realize you didn't know how to do. Nope, didn't know how to do it. Putting the bulletin's in backwards, standing straight up, all kinds of stuff. but you got it, by the fifth magazine, you got it. And then how to shoot.

And she beat some people in shooting that were there that had done it a bunch. Which is funny because I have not shaken like that in a million years. I was nervous. Well, you hadn't had any wine yet, too. I had a physician once tell me, one of my favorite physicians, and he said, there are gun people and there are not gun people. and that could not be further from the truth. Couldn't be further from the truth?

It could not. No, it is so true. Excuse me. No, I'm just, I want to understand. I thought all of a sudden that meant that you were. No, no, no, no, no. That's just what I normally would say after I said a statement like that. But so.

I think there are people who are afraid to handle a firearm. they should have respect for it. And then other people who have done it some and they're more comfortable with it and they found it fun. And those two groups can, the one can become the other. Well, I think that you are part of this little group that likes to, I like that popping of the pee, that likes to bully us non-gun people into becoming gun people and some people are not gun people. Oh, you feel bullied? And I am so sick of some of my friends telling me, you just need to get used to it.

You need to know how to defend yourself. Well, what if I can't, can I not do it in another way other than blowing a hole through somebody? One of the things that he talked about was using pepper gel. And he ruled out, he said, if you're not going to use a gun, don't use pepper spray. You know, it disperses and stuff. and don't use wasp spray because a lot of the people there were like, well, we use waspay,

and he said, well, that's actually considered a poison. You know, waspray is... A deadly weapon. Neurotoxic. It's neurotoxic. It blocks the muscle junctions. It's a, you know, phospho, whatever. I can't remember.

It's a phosphorus-containing blockade of acetylcholine receptors. Oh. And so it actually blocks the – now I don't remember the mechanism of it of – Anyway, that and a baseball bat while he's looking at a lot of – Oh, yeah, and baseball. Deadly weapons, and you cannot use deadly force. And they spent half the class telling you when you could not use a gun. And I just thought, well, fuck, I'm not – I just got – so if you see me coming, I've got the permit.

Probably not going to have. the device, but I will have some gel pepper spray because, you know, I do understand that that is necessary now. And I did not before. Yeah, here we go. Organophosphates. I knew that. I'm just getting old and it's been a long time since I've dealt with that. So I will get you. I just won't get you with a bullet. Yeah. So we learned something. Yeah. And you won't ever have to do it again. No. And thank you for my best, Father's Day ever, I guess. And they've got a couple good suggestions.

I think DP and the man are saying definitely some jiu-jitsu classes. I'm thinking Crob McGraw class is. Yeah, Crob McGrath. I like that just because they said that, you know, they talked about the definition of deadly weapon and hands can be deadly weapons. Not just martial arts, but if you've got a big giant guy

with big ham hands. Oh, gosh, yeah. Yeah, my hands are not deadly weapons. No, but you could, you could do some, you could do some Israeli fighting techniques on the ground. I mean, I would like to take that class. I think that would be fun. Okay, I found what I was looking for because it was driving me crazy. The organophosphates functioned by inhibiting the action of acetylcholine estuaries and nerve cells.

So that's an enzyme that actually, you know, modifies acetylcholine. and it's one of the most common causes of poisoning worldwide. As a matter of fact, the drug that you use to reverse it is the only truly engineered drug in the world. In other words, they saw how far apart the acetylcholine esterase receptors were, and they designed a molecule that was exactly, you know, down to the nanometer. Wow. wide by using organic chemistry and fiddling around with it. And when you give that to people, it displaces this stuff and allows the enzyme to work again.

But we do have wasp spray in our house for protection. We do? We also have a baseball bat. Yes. We have wasp ray for protection from wasps. No. What are you talking about? In our bedroom.

That's to protect you from him, isn't it? Well, that too. Well, that too. That too. Is it, okay, I think that's Isn't that a big thing of peppers? No, I don't think so. Okay.

I mean, I may be wrong. That shit. Who knows? But anyway, thank you for the... You're welcome, because it was hell. It was just fine. It was so much fun sitting there doing this and then looking over at you, just shaking

and just in abject, just anger and terror. No, I wasn't in anger. I was not in anger at all. Okay, on we. maybe it was on we what is on we just you know up against a brick wall I was very scared and I wanted

and when you told me that I had already passed I wanted to get the fuck out of it yeah she passed I was like then why do I need to do the rest of this you only had to score a 70 and she got a 90 on the first round so she really didn't have to shoot anymore but you're required to shoot 50 rounds but anyway

but so it's done and he was very he was the best instructor Yeah, he was really good. And, of course, people showed up 30 minutes late. Don't be those kind of people. That is really freaking ridiculous. Pissed me off. We're all just sitting there.

Instead of starting, he's like, well, we should wait for these people. And they called, and they're, oh, we're a little bit late. Literally showed up 30 minutes late. We still got out on time. Because the gun store was like, we're kicking you out on time. And then at the end, he's showing us how to load all this. all these different guns, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, it's way too much information. Anyway, it is done, and happy father's day.

Way to go. So on to our topics. Thank you. All right. Topic number one. Daily pill could cut lung cancer deaths in half. Oh, what's that? Popular science.

Okay, what is it? A subset of patients with early stage lung cancer who had undergoes. On Surgery, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, brand name Tagrisso by Erick-A AstraZenico. Yeah, I've heard of this. The pill is directed at specific receptor that helps cancer cells grow. 682 patients with non-small cell lung cancer, which is one of the two lung cancers that make up to 85% of all lung cancers.

Correct. Patients also had mutation in the epidermal growth factor resell. gene. This can increase cancer's ability to grow, which can increase a patient's risk of cancer

recurrence. Yeah, so this stuff is Olseneritinib. It's one of these osamartinib. These new drugs, I have to sound

them out. The monoclonal antibodies particularly, like it took me forever to get Bevacizumab right by just looking at it, you know.

But these These things are kinase inhibitors and they decrease an enzyme that facilitates growth of the tumor. And yeah, you're right, Tase, people who took this early, looks like they had a 51% decrease in lung cancer death. If they had early stage lung cancer and then took it every day for three years. Now, this mutation is also usually in patients who didn't. Smoke. Isn't that interesting? So now we have to find the one for the people that do.

And now that they know this works, this is the one thing. You know, people rail against Big Pharma. And I am sort of a Jimmy Dorr, left-leaning libertarian, I guess. But where I disagree is about having government control of pharmaceutical industry because I think it will decrease innovation. I think it already has. Yeah. Well, to some degree it has.

But these kinds of things, right now, there are people with a huge profit motive, and look, I get it. You know, we don't want to be making money off of people's tragedy. But the profit motive does drive innovation in the sense that now that they know this does this for this one, they've just got to find the right kinase to block for the other ones. Now, there is a form of lung cancer called small cell lung cancer. And it kind of behaves like lymphoma early on in the course in the sense that when you treat them with chemotherapy, it tends to just go away. And then it's gone and you go, wow, you know, her scan's completely clear and you think you're doing okay. And then about 12 to 18 months later, it comes back with a vengeance because the cells that were left behind are resistant to everything that you throw at it now.

So we need this kind of thing for small cell lung cancer, and guaranteed, if you go to clinical trials.gov, they're looking at some tyrosine kinase inhibitor for small cell lung cancer. And when we find that, and we can increase that life expectancy. Well, now, I wondered what you would think about this. Now, five years after diagnosis, 88% were still alive compared to 78% of the placebo group. Yes, so these are people with early. stage lung cancer. So a lot of them weren't going to die anyway. So this is, again, one of those relative risk versus absolute risk things. So it looks like, you know, the difference was about

10% in the absolute numbers. Yeah. You know, 78 to 68. But still that's statistically significant. Well, this data is the first to show how targeted treatment for early stage lung cancer can impact patient survival. Yeah. 30 years ago, there was nothing they could do for these patients. That's right.

That's right. It's crazy. 30 years is like yesterday. Yeah, it really is. It seems like it. 1990. Oh, no, it's unbelievable. Come on now.

What? I just graduated from high school. 90. 92, 10th, or 93. Oh, shit. It's crazy. It's bizarre. It's just bizarre.

God. So fucking old. Wake up tomorrow. It's 30 years gone by. Oh, she's. Yeah. I just found out that if I wait two more years, my Social Security payment cannot go any higher, so I have to start taking it. That's how old I am.

Well, how did that happen? It's all the good clean living, Dr. Steve. God. Good clean living. Well, my life just flew by me. Topic number two. Okay, sorry. A cure for baldness.

What? What? Would you like to speak some more on that? No, no, no, I was saying I forgot that we were still doing topic time. I got to wound up on that. How old I am. That's a dancing age. Yes.

No, the whole 1990s thing was yesterday is something everybody our age feels. Okay. Good. Oh, yeah. And, um... Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one that's miserable. All right. So go ahead.

A cure for baldness. Really? Scientists regrow hair using stem cells. And this comes from earth.com. follicles and stem cells harden over time impeding their ability to sprout hair they found a way to soften these hair follicles stem cells thus revitalizing their ability to produce hair this resolves sorry

I've had wine because I had to shoot a gun today you shot it really well though around a tiny RNA molecule known as MRI 205 by enhancing its production they reduce boosted its stem cell rigidity, diminished boosting hair growth in the process. They used mice's subjects by overproducing MRIR-205 and encouraging surge and hair growth occurred. It started to sprout in 10 days. Now, to find out if it works topically.

Yeah, so stem cell-based therapies are, you know, stem cell's a big deal right now. Everything that I do is about a damn cell. stem cells. Right. And so what stem cells are these sort of multipotent cells that can turn into different things. When we first were developing, you know, the egg is just kind of one big stem cell if you think about it because it's a fertilized egg and then it divides and then all of a sudden these cells are no longer just cells dividing. One is the front part of this, you know, this entity and one is the back part, and then, you know, some things turn into spinal cord cells and something. You know, I'm not going to list every single kind of cell in the body, but it's amazing.

But it all stems from this sort of omnipotent or pluripotent cell. Now, is this related to what we saved for our boys when they were born? Sure. We did us. We saved cord blood, which I actually talked to a hematologist because the boys are, 18 and 20 do we need to keep that and they said yeah it's still we could still use it for things if they need a stem cell transplant down the road they feel like they might be able to culture them from their cord blood and then give them their own stem cells instead of somebody else's so that's

pretty cool but you know where they get the stem cells for this hair treatment no fat cells Yeah. So back in the day, the controversy about stem cell therapy was they were getting the stem cells from fetal blood, which were almost always due to a therapeutic or an elective abortion. And so that people had issues with that. It's like the vaccine folks, they'll say, well, I have a religious objection to vaccination. It's like, well, where is it saying anything about vaccines in the Bible? It's like, no, it's because they test these things on cell lines that were developed from aborted feces. And so that, I can see that. I mean, you know, they're not making any more aborted fetuses. These are cell lines that are that live forever, but that's where they came from.

And people have a conscious objection to that. So it's like, hey, vaccine people, if you want to get rid of that, And when I say vaccine people, vaccine manufacturers, if you want to get rid of that objection, tested some other way. You know, Jesus just come up with and say these are aborted fetus-free vaccines. And then you may get at least a subset of people that will go, okay, well, that was my only objection to it and do it. But anyway, in the beginning, they needed to do that. Now, they found ways that they can take already mature, differentiated cells in terms of and then back into stem cells.

And that's what this is about. Cool. So it's pretty neat. That's awesome. Yeah. So if it works topically, there may not be any bald people. Hmm. Unless they choose to be bald.

Unless they choose to be. Now people will be just shaving their head just to be different. Yeah. It's cool. Okay, cool. Topic number three. FDA clears beta biionics. I let bionic pancreas.

Steve, have you heard about this? Oh, no, but we've been talking about bionic pancreases for quite Now, this is really cool. So this is, but it may not be what you think. It's no carb counting required. Yeah. It's an automated insulin delivery system that eliminates the need for carb counting. Correct.

Top ones, age six and over. It only needs to be, you only need to know your body weight, and you need to tell it if a meal is average in size or larger. Well, you know, PA John has a thing like this. It's sense, so this is not implantable, though, right? This is a device, an external device. And you've got to also give it its desired glucose target. It's launch date. It's not released yet.

But he still is counting his carbs in his head. Yes. But he has a device. He has a sensor that speaks to his insulin pump. Yes. And it drives him crazy because sometimes it will read low when the thing falls off. And then it's not giving him his insulin. he wakes up with an insulin of 400

or every once in a while it will malfunction and give him too much insulin and he ends up. So it's not perfect but it is basically a sensor that is implanted in his skin and then it communicates with his pump and says, hey I need more I need more, I need less, I need less, I need less.

Well I guess this isn't that cool. No, no, no. Apparently this is something different because it's all in one device. I think that's the difference. The pump's algorithm can automatically make adjustments to insulin dosing. FDA calls it a breakthrough device. You know, they don't do that very often. Well, no, they don't.

During studies, patients on the IOT system spent 2.6 more hours a day in their target glucose range than others. Okay. One third used an AID system. another used a pump without AID, and remaining were on injections. So they did, like, what John was on, injections, and then this. And 2.6 hours more in your target glucose range is pretty cool, I think. Okay, this is pretty interesting. So this article I'm looking at says that there are commercially available things like P.A. John has.

So this is the difference. They are called hybrid closed loop systems. they partially automate insulin delivery, but they still require significant input from users. And that's what you were talking about, where John has to put in sometimes his glucose that he took so it could preemptively decrease it. So it's not just always being reactive because there's a little bit of a delay. And it says that John would have to put in a basal rate of background insulin delivery and then insulin sensitivity factors and carbohydrate grams at each meal. So that's what you were talking about. So you're absolutely right.

It says in contrast, the device tested in this study uses algorithms that determine glucose delivery based only on body weight. And so that's pretty damn cool. Yeah, I talked about how much time patients were saving. Yeah, and you want to see their hemoglobin A1C's come down, which is a three-month measure of glucose control as glucose attaches itself to hemoglobin molecules. and those red blood cells that are, you know, transporting hemoglobin around lasts about 100 days. And so the amount of glucose that is attached to the hemoglobin will give you kind of a decent estimate of what your average blood sugar was. Because if you get somebody, let's say they come to your office every week at 8 a.m., and their blood sugar is perfect. But then they go and they eat donuts and stuff and they eat pizza and then their blood sugar is 500 the rest of the day.

You're not getting a good impression of what their blood sugar is. But the hemoglobin A1C would then show you, hey, this person may have a blood sugar of 92 in your office, but their average blood sugar is 300. So what we want to see is that these people live longer with fewer adverse effects because we're putting it on kids and getting them before their blood sugar gets so out of wang dang doodle that they have problems because I used to have kids that were insulin dependent diabetics. And when they'd hit 12, 13, 14, And, of course, the hormones kick in. Their blood sugar gets out of control.

And then they get oppositional, too. They're tired of being told what to do. And I would just tell them, listen, there's an artificial pancreas is coming. And then we will eventually have a pancreas, islech cell transplant that will actually work. And so just hang in there. Don't allow permanent damage to happen right now for that. And most of the kids would get that, you know. Of course, I'd talk to him in their language.

Man, it's like, man, hey, let's sit down and rap, man. One more topic. And I don't know what Scott feels about this, but can Taurine? Torrine. Torine. I'm glad you brought, I was going to bring this one. Slow aging. Yes.

By time. I'm glad you brought this one. So Toreen is an amino acid that is. Is this your topic? time? Well, okay, I'm sorry, go ahead. Thank you. It's familiar in energy drinks. This paper

was published June 8th and science researchers, and it shows tarine can slow aging in worms, mice, and monkeys. Taurine levels decline with age and can be boosted with exercise. It's not the fountain of youth, but maybe the promise that

could get certain systems function better and act younger again. We make it naturally in the body also get it there through diet by eating meat, fish, and eggs. There you go, Scott, you're probably not getting any of that. Beish. A fish. He eats fish, yeah. That's it. Animals just didn't live longer, but healthier. Supplemented mice lived on average 10 to 12 percent longer than old mice who didn't get it. Well, I'm not taking it.

Needs to be verified in human studies. Too late. You know, is your life so bad? No, I just make you so miserable that you're not taking to chlorine. I yearn for the peace that death will bring. Somebody else said that. Nobody knows, you know, what if it doesn't bring you peace, Steve? I'm... You better just stay here. I'm just going to tell you this right now.

I'm taking Torraine now after I saw this study. When I see these studies, I get the supplement, you know. If you go to Dr. Steve or stuff.com and scroll down, you can see the supplements that I use to really improve my peripheral neuropathy. And, you know, when my neurologist said, oh, there's nothing you could do, I said, well, bullshit, I'm going to at least look some of this stuff up and found things on in, the good data isn't great. It's pretty good data, but it's not great because no one is doing double-blind placebo-controlled long-term studies on people with neuropathy with glutamine because it costs like 10 cents a bill. Yeah, with nothing to make, yeah. Right. So they're not going to do it.

So the data is decent. You know, my results are anecdotal, but it's good enough that I can put it on, you know, recommend it to patients. And so, you know, the nutritional supplement industry is not just a complete horse shit. There are some supplements out there that really can help people. You know, you see this vast wall of nutritional supplements when you go to a farm. like CVS or Walgreens or a natural pharmacy. Natural food distortion. And they make all kinds of claims on some of these things.

But if you look at the data, there are some supplements that actually do something. For peripheral neuropathy, you've got glutamine, alpha-lypoic acid, myoanocetol. For longevity, we've got phosphatidyl syrin. Yes. And now torrine. and citrus flavonoids. So, you know, and then there are some supplements that can help with, well, just all kinds of stuff. So, but I never look at the bottle that says, oh, helps with immune health.

It's like, oh, what does that mean? So you want to look these things up or email me, and then maybe we could have a database that says this is what these things are good for. Actually, Medscape has a decent supplement, a database that has, if you put in a supplement, it'll tell you what people claim it's good for and what the data shows. What do you think about all these supplements people can buy from like these multimedia? Is that what you call it multimedia? What are you talking about? Triangle marketing scams.

Oh, like pyramid schemes. Yeah, period schemes. Yeah, I wouldn't think that. Oh, you're talking about don't name any names, but where you could get the vitamins and stuff like that. Well, the ones that, okay, cure your sleep, cure your pain, make you awake during the day. I mean, they do absolutely everything. And all you need to spend is about $300 a month. Right, right, right.

And then you get these little packs of things and stuff. Yeah. Again, they can't just show anecdotal anecdotal. Anecdotal data. Here's what a lot of them will do. rather than show you double-blind placebo-controlled studies or just even observational studies from the medical literature, they'll have 1,000 people,

and they'll give it to them. And 900 of them will say this stuff's bullshit. But the placebo effect is, let's say it's 10%. So then they'll have 100 people who say, wow, yeah, I feel much better. And they'll have them do testimonials, and you'll have page after page after page of testimonials. If all they have is testimonial data,

that ain't going to fly. I would be very suspicious. Now, I guarantee you they're not all bad because I love Rodinfields. I think that's a great product. I don't know what it is. Well, it's skin product. I mean, you know, you sell it and then you get somebody else to sell it. Oh, of course, no.

The things that people sell, there's many of them are really good. I'm just talking about the typical place that's selling sort of these panaceas, as you talked about. that treat this and that and the other. And the only evidence that they have is anecdotal, you know, testimonials. Or they've got some really weak stuff. When they say, oh, well, it's clinically proven. Go look at this study and see if it really is. Right.

Because many times it will be clinically proven in worms, like you talked about with taurine. I'll take it because it's an amino acid that we use a can really hurt. Right. Unless the process that makes it. is flawed, which is what happened with triptophan. Do you remember that? I had a few of those patients back in the 80s, where they were taking L-Tryptophan for sleep,

and it turned out that the manufacturing process was incorrect, and they were taking something other than L-triptophan, and it caused a condition called eocinophilic myocitis with scleroderma, So they had the really thick skin, and they had immune problems and muscle, just horrible muscle pain and stiffness. And it killed some people. I don't remember that. Yeah. And it was just one lot of tryptophan that caused the problem.

So I always buy my stuff from now or nature. Was it nature made? You like that? Yeah, they seem to be good. So anyway. I like them. All right. Very interesting.

Yes. So that concludes our time of topics. Yay, thank you. Great job. It's Tacey's Time of Topics. After a really rough day, that's pretty... Did you do that today? No.

Okay. Shue. No, I did that this week. All right, let's... This is a question. Oh, we should probably play the disclaimer, though, for our strange. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio.

Thank you, Ronnie B. We're going to take a question from a really cool list. Hey, Dr. Steve. Hey, Dr. Scott. It's a parent from Illinois. When I was around 17 years old, I felt something hit me in the side of the head. Upon further investigation, I realized nothing hit in the side of the head. Something popped out of my head. It was a giant ball of ear wax. Bigger than a marble, smaller than a nickel in diameter. And it had hair in it. Nice. And the rest was just pure wax. Yeah.

You pop it in your mouth? Have you ever heard of anything like this? And what kind of pressure is there for that to be popped out of my head? Thanks. I'll hang up and take your answer off the air. All right, my friend. Yeah, Scott, you want to talk about this one? not really

okay well ear wax is called serumin it's basically a form of

oil that gets thick and that's secreted by cells in the ear canal just sort of

line it and protect it but it can build up over time and if you get a big glob

of this stuff and there can harden and it can actually occlude it I don't know if it was a change in air pressure or if he popped his ears and then in his tympanic membrane, the eardrum popped out and it decreased the potential space between this bolus and the eardrum and that caused the thing to pop out or if it was barometric pressure because it would be under a certain pressure if all of a sudden the outside pressure was lower than the inside pressure, it would pop up. out or if there was a roach that was in there that just said oh i you know i'm tired of being in

kicked it out or it just fell out and he it just was weird and he felt like it it popped out that's what i was going to say because you know for the tent paddy membrane is so tight anyway so it doesn't it's not going to move much at all it won't when you pop your ears though it will pop out right and when you are on an airplane for example and you go up it will pop uh it It will pop out toward the outside. Then when you go down, it will bend in toward the inside. So you want to yawn or chew gum going up, but on the way down, you want to blow. You know, occlude your nose, put your head forward, and blow against pressure, and it'll pop your ears back.

But, you know, it's got to be fractions of a millimeter, though. It's almost like that thing had to fall out when it did to just create a vacuum, so it felt like it popped. Yeah, it's got to be. You know, because that's a hell of a lot of whack. I think just when something falls out of your ear like that, it's kind of feel weird. Your brain can't interpret it. And the hair is just from having hair. Ear hair, yeah.

So, you're just gross, dude. Yeah. Congratulations, that's something we do. If that happened then, though, it's probably still happening. So you may want to get a thing called a murine ear kit. That's the old school way of doing it, where you put glycerin with hydrogen perox. in your ears while you lay down

with your bad ear up and then watch an episode of Seinfeld. It's about 20, 30 minutes. And then you take a bulb syringe and you immerse it in warm water, fill it up, and then put your ear over the sink and then

lavage out your ear. And try to just, you can do that once every three months just as a routine maintenance. I hate it when I go to the doctor and they look in my ear and go, I got to get the curate out. They got to gouge out, disgusting earwax for my ear. Do you remember that one time that all that stuff came out of your ear?

Out of my ear? Yeah. No. You told me about it. You didn't let me see it, but you told me all about it. What? What did I tell you? I do not remember this.

That it was a big wad of stuff and it had hair in it. Well, okay. Same thing. It was just probably a big bolus of wax. And people will come in and they can't hear. And they're very grateful when you look in there and say, well, it's earwax. and we have these big giant silver syringes that we can usually get it out

with one or two pumps and they're very grateful because all of a sudden the pressure is gone and they can hear again. Yeah, you were like, wow. I'm so gross. I don't remember that. I don't remember that.

Human body is disgusting anyway, but... I don't shoot guns for gross people. Well, thank you. Well, anyway, they sell a spray bottle type lavage for the ear now. This is a relatively recent

invention that's not a new invention but it's been brought to the market and it's a little bit higher pressure and maybe a little more focused than the old school blue bulb syringe so that's for people that really have it bad.

Yeah this morning on the CBS morning news they actually had a brand new somebody invented like a lavage for your ear. Oh really? Like the navage? Yeah you have to kind of lean your over the sink and squeeze it in there. It looked pretty good. Is it motorized?

Yeah. Oh, so it is like a Nabazz. Very much like a Naboth. They should call it an O-Tah. We'll do a contest to see who can get the most. Yeah, that's cool. Is it on the market already? Yes, because I'll buy one.

Yeah, it is. Just for routine care. You know how you women, before you go to the gynaecologist, you kind of spruce up down there and stuff? Or the, or the, or the, or the, or the, yeah. Like, when I saw my GI after I did my procedure, he said... Colonoscopy, you mean? Yeah.

He said, I tell people, just don't do anything down there. It always looks better before than it does after. And I said, don't tell me that. I spent half an hour taking care of things down there before. Ew. What did you take care of? You know what? I don't know what I took care of.

Steve, I can't see it. I don't want to know. It's fine. I just shave just in case. I didn't feel any hair. But you know how you guys. So you guys do that, you know, take care of things, stay in that area. And I will do that now with my ears before I get somebody looking at my ear.

It's sort of the same thing. Let's do that. But Tacey is correct on the as, the anus thing. Because if you do your colonoscopy, and I've told this story before, I won't tell the whole story, but I do my colonoscopies without anesthesia. And so you're laying down and you can see the screen. that they're looking at. And right before the scope,

because now you can see your ass, you can see your ass, and then it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and there's your, you know, your anus. And all of a sudden it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Oh, it's filling up the whole screen right before the tube enters into the rectum. And you can see your disgusting, foldy,

ugh, anus, filling up a six-foot TV screen, that's the worst part about having a colonoscopy without anesthesia for me. The rest of it's a cakewalk after seeing that. And then I see the nurses and all that in the hospital, and I'm like, I know that's what they're thinking about when they see me and say hi. Your hair, yes.

Yeah, just my giant, disgusting anus. Love it. Ugh. Anyway, all right. Poor little boy. I know, bless it. Hey, Dr. Steve. Yep.

Good. Good. Thanks, man. Oh, yeah. How's it going, man? Whatever. So, I have a cannabis question, a T.C. question. Excellent.

I'm on medical marijuana now. I've since quit drinking. Oh, good. Because I said when marijuana became legal, I would, you know, just stop drinking. Okay. Well, someone who made themselves a promise and actually stuck to it. Good for them. I don't know, I felt like it was better.

If the point is to get altered and get a little higher or feel some kind of way, then I always thought that medical or marijuana rather was just a better way to do it. Healthier, anyway. But because I do primarily edibles, I don't smoke. Yes. And that gets processed through the liver. I was curious if there was any data on, like, you know, obviously we know alcohol can damage the liver and, you know, like, if you do it too much, if you drink it too much, or maybe even if you just drink at all, I think there's liver damage involved. But does THC that gets processed through the liver do the same thing?

Like, can you just, you know, eat edibles every day, you know, a couple times a day? essentially be doing liver damage to yourself or is because of the way it gets processed. It's more like food or something like that. Great question. Great question. The liver is designed to detoxify things. The problem, when you eat an edible, you're talking about 10 milligrams of THC.

Right. At most. So, you know, some people are insane and do 100, but, you know, 2.5 to 10 milligrams. When you're drinking alcohol, it's just constant. It goes on for hours, and it really stresses the liver a lot more. THC, he's absolutely right. After oral consumption, it travels to the liver.

Really, most of it's eliminated or metabolized. So the THC is changed into other molecules by this system called C-dipacetachrome P-450, and they turn THC into 11 hydroxy tetrahydrocanabal, which is psychoactive. Then the second time it goes through, it changes it into 11 carboxyl, let me see, carboxyl hydroxy, tetrahydrochinaabinal, and that is not psychoactive. So, you know, 65% of it is excreted in the fecal matter and then 20% in the urine, which is where we pick it up for urine drug screens, by the way. So, you know, most of it's going to be gone in about five days. although for chronic users he'll be there all the time

I will say this I have never seen a single case of cirrhosis that was pegged at THC use I've seen adverse effects from chronic THC use don't get me wrong cyclic vomiting syndrome

being the worst that I've seen and that's one where people use it all the time and you'd say well THC is good for nausea and vomiting yeah in intermittent doses but if you take it every day day there are some people that just

start puking on a cyclic basis and it's horrendous and if they stop ingesting THC then it goes away yeah it's bad but anyway okay so that's really why it's a difference taking a gummy is more like

medicine to the liver because it peaks and then it's gone whereas alcohol is just on and on and on and first pass second past third pass takes a while for the liver to get rid of it. And then, you know, the alcohol is actually doing damage to the liver cell. So, all right.

If I see something different about that, I mean, we can talk about adverse effects of marijuana, but cirrhosis isn't one of them. All right. You know, Big Steve. Hey, man. Bobby C. What up? I was wondering.

That's my name. I woke up the day, well, more than a week ago, with limited speed, with limited It's strength and dexterity in my right arm. Yeah. It's been pretty persistent. I haven't done anything strenuous. I was wondering what could cause this. I'm then sort of like flopping it around, slapping it about.

Yeah. You know. But still, just weird. My arm don't work no good. It is weird. And I think I know what it is, Scott. You got any idea? What do you say?

He just woke up and he woke up and his right arm is floppy. Yeah, it sounds like he's got a pretty severe pinched nerve, but no pain, but what is it, though? Brachialplexus? Possibly. Possibly. You know what? You've not given any bells out today because you forgot about them. No, I didn't forget about them.

That's exactly what happened. He forgot about it. He's given himself. I'm giving internal bells to myself because I've been so awesome today. No, this is almost because people, this will happen to people, and if they have left arm weakness, and they're a young person, he sounds pretty young, and then it goes away, that can be a sign of a migraine. Oh, okay. But he's talking about floppy arm, and his wrist is floppy. I'm going to guess, I wish I had him on the phone.

This is classic for a thing called Saturday Night Palsy. and Dr. Scott is correct It is a neurologic problem But it is caused by direct pressure On to the upper medial arm Or it can be the armpits So it would be brachial plexus So I'll give you

Give thyself a bell Give you part of a bell You know what You can go scur You get to give yourself one You know what? I shoot guns for you Yep Okay you know what

Harken to thine innovation Give myself a bell A big bell She gets a full bell Yeah I'll see it You're right I get you. Yeah, you do get it, don't you?

This is a compressive neuropathy. Right. And the weird thing is that the hand will not work when the wrist is fully flexed. Gotcha. You can't, you lose dexterity. So what they'll have you do is they put you into a brace where the wrist is extended. And at least you can still use your fingers. And then you can use your arm.

For how long do you have to wear the brakes? It can be anywhere from a couple of things. the days to a couple of weeks, usually. Really? Now, you do need to see somebody to make sure that they're making the diagnosis but correctly, and there are some tests that they can do to confirm it, particularly a electromagnogram and nerve conduction velocity. But it's generally a clinical diagnosis, and it's almost always, well, it is always, the person wakes up and they fell asleep with their arm over their head on a chair and they were drunk or they fell asleep and they fell asleep and

They laid with their head on their arm and they were drunk. It's almost always they were intoxicated or it could be a prolonged nod from opioids or something like that, but they slept down. How can I not have had that yet? Well, you always go to bed. I've never seen you pass out anywhere but in the bed. So you always go to bed and then you pass out drunk. I've never seen you pass out on a kitchen table or something, except the time when we were in New Orleans and you passed out in. Patoots listening to Jimmy Tibido

With your head on the table But there were many more things bad that happened that night And that was the least of it. We were told that story on this show. No, but we don't need to. Oh, my God. Let's just move along.

It was the greatest. People like the questions best. Yes, of course they do. The problem is we were just about out of time. So what I want this guy to do is go see somebody and make sure that that's what it is. And the problem is that phone call came in in September.

And this is what, June? No, it's September. Way to go, Steve. If you have an emergency, don't call and leave a voicemail for us. I mean, you can, but then call 911 or call your primary care. Make sure you're going to take him care of. I hope he's okay. Oh, I mean, I hope he still doesn't have floppy arm.

I texted him. Okay. Dude, I've been waiting for you for the last nine months. Hey, Dr. Scott, before we go, Diesel Child had a question. And they said, if you take Viagra, which is a vasodilator, and you take caffeine, which is a vaso-constrictor, do they cancel each other out? And the answer is it really doesn't work that way. Number one, sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, is a phosphodiasriiase-5 inhibitor when basically what it does, and it decreases. the function of an enzyme that results in an increase in nitricos.

Nitric oxide. And its substrate is arginine. Okay. So the nitric oxide increases, and you get increased blood flow in certain places of the body. One is the pulmonary artery, so it decreases pulmonary hypertension. I will use it for that. from people who have high blood pressure in the, in the, in the, in the, um, lungs. The vessel going from the heart to the lungs.

Right. And that's a problem. When you, the blood pressure is too high, you get right heart failure because right heart isn't designed to pump his heart against a lot of pressure. And then it will increase blood flow in the muscles. So that's why people like to use arginine for, uh, for, um, weightlifting and stuff. They'll, they'll pre-treat themselves with arginine. in the hopes that they'll increase the nitric oxide,

increase blood flow to the muscles while they're working them out. And then the other place it does it is the, you know, the junkle region, the good old male membership. It will increase blood flow to the penis and decrease outflow. And so what you end up with is an erection, whereas before you might have had half one or none at all. Now, caffeine is, if anything, a very weak vasoconstrictor and it kind of has more systemic effect.

So you can drink coffee and take sildenafil at the same time because the sildenophil's effect on those areas that it has effect is much more pronounced than any effect of caffeine. Yeah, take a hell of a caffeine and offset that. Yeah, so. Okay, so there's that one. That's a good question. Well, I've got a great one from Donna Bell.

Donabelle. Donabell. When you lose weight, when you lose weight, Where does it go? Do you pee it out? Do you breathe it out? So, yeah, that's a good question. So when you can lose weight by taking Lasix, you know, a diuretic and just pee out a bunch of fluid.

And you'll lose weight. But what we really want to do, right, is we want to re-sculpt our body and lose fat. So the process of breaking down fat is called lipop. And the fat cells in your body will first shrink. Right. So they get smaller because they're storage cells, right? And then they will eventually, you know, invalute if they're not needed. So what happens is, and I've noticed this, when I am losing fat because I'm on a low carbohydrate diet,

I tend to notice that I'm peeing out. I have more urine output. And so, yes, the weight, quote unquote, weight is excreted as byproducts of the use of fat cells to create energy. Right. Because that's what they're there for. Right. It's just like a squirrel socking away nuts. And for the wintertime, the body squirrels away energy in the...

The pet cells. Right. in the form of fat cells. Now, there's another place where it stores it as well, which is, you know, carbohydrate chains. And it's called glycogen. And then glycogen is stored in the liver and in the muscle tissue. And if you take in no carbohydrates, glycogen will be used first to create energy because it's readily available. And when you hear of people who are marathon runners that hit the wall, that's because they've run out of,

glycogen. That's why those people, not archers, Kirk, not gamblers, don't need to carb load, but people need to carbloat if they're at risk of running out of glycogen in whatever activity they're doing. And when they hit the wall, it means that they're going from a glycogen type metabolism to all of a sudden they're having to break down proteins in their muscles and fat cells as quickly as they possibly can. And it's very difficult to do. So you have to condition yourself to be able to store more glycogen anyway. But I notice that when I'm on a low-carb diet and I deplete my body of glycogen and I start into the ketosis, which is really what it's saying is there's lipolysis going on. You're breaking down fats to make energy that a lot of that is excreted in the urine, you know, the byproducts of that. Okay. Okay. All right?

Fabulous. That's my hypothesis, anyway. That's sort of my sort of policy. I know when I lose weight, when I weigh myself the next morning after I've peed a lot, I have lost a significant amount of people. Because with women, you can gain and lose four pounds in a day. It's ridiculous. There is another place.

Did they say lungs? Did they say? She asked if you breathe it up. Oh, okay. Now I'm going to have to give her a bell. Give thyself a bell. I think Sean's got a couple. So water is one of the sources of, quote-unquote, weight loss when you break down fat.

One of the ways that the body gets rid of the stuff. But apparently the lungs are the primary excretory organ for fat. You excrete tons of carbon dioxide because it's carbon dioxide and water that are the byproducts. And, you know, the ketone bodies are sort of intermediary, intermediate bodies when you're trying to break down fat to make energy. And it's interesting, if you get little kids can go into ketosis really fast. You get a kid with like a gastroenteritis where they haven't eaten for 12 hours or something. They'll have ketones in their urine because they go very quickly to a fat metabolism to maintain their energy. Pretty neat.

Good stuff, Dr. Steve. All right. All right. Well, listen to everybody. Thank you, guys. Thanks. Always go to Dr. Scott and to Tacey and to everyone in the fluid family. The fluid family are folks that listen to us and watch us sort of live on our YouTube channel,

YouTube.com slash at Weird Medicine. And just follow our Twitter at Weird Medicine or subscribe and like the channel. But if you subscribe and turn on the notifications, it'll tell you when we go live. It's usually Saturday afternoon. We try to do it at one, but today we had a really fun activity. And it's also becoming summertime, so 1 o'clock is kind of... Yeah, and maybe what we ought to do is do it in the evening when it's cooler up here anyway. Oh, we're something to do.

No. No, because you'll be shit-faced. Liquor-up, yeah. Because, of course, you have to, right? But listen to our Sirius X-M show on the Faction Talk Channel, Serious Channel 103, Saturdays at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern on demand. Another time to 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,

other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoking. Get off your asses and get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of WeirdMast. Goodbye, everyone. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.