Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 565 - Death By Helium

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Dr Steve, Dr Scott, Tacie, and DNP Carissa discuss: Isotopes (not the band) for bone metastases Chronic appendicitis vs. acute Blue light glasses do not reduce eye strain can using T cause cancer? Carrisa’s ear suck Dreaming in real time helium hypoxia? why are our mouths and rectums positioned the way they are? 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 ;-) [PS: Thank you DropBox for having a 30 day deleted-file recovery system! We got all (I think) of the deleted shows back!] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He's a fucking idiot. You see? You see? You're stupid minds. Stupid. Stupid. Oh, uh, wow. That is very interesting. Please tell me more. Uh, can you like, shut up?

If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve, host of weird medicine on Sirius XM103, and made popular by two really comedy shows, Opie and Anthony and Ron and Fez, you would have thought that this guy was a bit of, you know, a clown. Why can't you give me? The respect that I'm entitled to! I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Subola vibes stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbells, exacerbating my infectable woes.

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

And now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my little panel, Dr. Scott. Traditional Chinese medicine divider gives me street credit with wacko alternative medicine ass. Fuchs. Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. My partner in all things, Tacey, hello, Tacey. Hello.

And my partner in my job. Hello, DNP, Chris. How are you? Rude. Yes, you are. This is a show for people who never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you've got a question, you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider. If you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call 347-7-66-4-3-23.

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 for podcast, medical news and stuff you go by. Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Take everything here with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking over with your health care provider. Hang on very good.

Please don't forget stuff. Dot, Dr.steve.com. Stuff. Dot, dot, Dr. Steve.com. I'll hug your neck if you use stuff. Dot, Dr. Steve.com. And just go there and you can click through to Amazon or you can scroll down and see all the stuff we talk about on this show

and we'll be referencing it later in the show Rody.do dot Dr. Steve.com R-O-A-D-I-E dot Dr.steve.com or you can get that stuff about Dr. Steve.com. Now, D&P, Carissa, you had homework to do with regard to the Rodey

and you were going to use the Rody coach to learn the ukulele. How's that going? It's actually going really well. Okay, so you're going to bring it in next week and we're going to play a song together. Is that how this is going to go? Are you, would you be ready? I mean, we'll do one of your, the songs that you know.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm not, I mean, I am worried about that. I don't know how the fuck to play an instrument. I'm learning, but it is very helpful. I just, I might work next week. Oh, okay, well, we'll work on your schedule. But, I mean, typically I can. Next time you come, will you bring it? Mm-hmm.

Okay, we'll do it. Absolutely. Because, yeah, I was actually quite impressed, DMP Carissa, after just having that thing for a couple of days was, you know, had three chords. Oh, wow. And three chords about all you need. She could play as it was by, what's his face? Harry Stiles.

She could play the lava song from the Pixar. That's my new tattoo. And she's got the new tattoo, so there you go. I love that song. All right. Yeah, and it's literally three chords, and I guess that might be why. I don't know. Anyway, so those are the three chords that go with a lot of those kinds of songs.

Really, if you know the right three chords, you could play a crap load of songs with that, just in playing them in a different rhythm and different order and stuff. So anyway, check that out. Rodey.com. Check out Dr. Scott's website at simply herbal.net. And the patreon.com, we did a group live stream last week, and that was fun to do. And check that out. We've got all kinds of content going way back.

Plus, you can get access to the archives. depending on the level that you're at and there are merchandise gifts that you get and all this kind of crap so check it out plus you know fun shows Patreon.com slash weird medicine we've had Pete Davidson

we had Mark Norman we had the Troika of Opin Anthony all three of them have been on so anyway check that out anything else oh I think it did cameo we don't have a cameo this week but that was fun last week camio.com slash weird medicine I'll say

fluid to your mama or tell your best friend they have tiny testicles which is what happened on the last cameo but I blamed it on the person that bought it so anyway it's fun so and it's cheap unbelievably cheap and it goes toward ham radio so how can that be bad right we're gonna bounce signals off the moon that's what our next project is so cameo.com slash weird medicine check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. That's simplyerbils.net. And that is, you know, its allergy season is upon us, and CBD nasal spray is a partial answer for that. The magic stuff, brother.

And as far as I know, it can only be gotten at simplyerbils.net. Yeah. And instead of science, he uses magic. So there you go. There may be a silk. Fulard involved in there somewhere. Oh, God. There may be. Anyway. Okay, very good.

Well, we might as well just get right into it. I do have a topic of my own today. Before we get to calls. Yes, I do. Dr. Steve did his homework. This is Durand Durand guitarist Andy Taylor received end of life

care after his cancer diagnosis and now he is asymptomatic. Oh, wow. So I'll read this article and then I'll explain what happened. Founding Duran Duran member and guitarist Andy Taylor says he's now asymptomatic after previously

receiving palliative end-of-life care following his cancer diagnosis. He revealed Stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis last November, saying he was initially diagnosed in 2018. And he explained the dramatic U-turn happened

after a doctor told him about a breakthrough cancer drug dubbed a quote, clear medicine, okay, it's not dubbed that, it's what it is, called Lutetium 177 that targets cancer cells. So he underwent a round of the treatment and he conducted by Christopher Evans, whom Taylor referred to as the Elon Musk of cancer. This stuff is commercially available. It's not like this guy whipped up an isotope in his lab. Anyway, and he was, quote, radioactive for several days.

I was classified as palliative end of life care, and now I'm not. I'm asymptomatic. So I'm really glad that that is the case for him. So let's talk a little bit about Letitium 177. We used to use strontium 69, and then we were using radium. I can't remember the 223, I think. And now we're using this luteum 177. What these are are radioactive isotopes.

So when you have a cancer cell that lives in your bone, then you, it is constantly trying to protect itself, right? That's part of the thing. It starts growing and multiplying, and then it has to protect itself from the outside world. And so it builds itself a little house. And one of the ions that it uses is calcium, because calcium is readily available. and that's what bone is partially made of. So it'll start grabbing calcium ions out of the blood and bringing it into itself to make its little house, right?

Well, these cancer cells are so fucking dumb. I mean, really, you know, if you just want to say that, they're dumb. And they will grab radioactive isotopes as well. They think Letitium 177 is calcium. It's like, well, it looks like. a calcium on to me, I was put it right here in this brick house. Bring it on to the house.

And it's very similar to how if you take corn and put rat poison on it and then the rats take it into the nest and all the rats die, this is the same thing, kind of. A better analogy would

be that you're giving someone who's laying bricks in their house, you're substituting C4 for some of those bricks and after a while, you know, you explode the C4 and the house comes tumbling down. So this Letitium 177, being radioactive, kills the cancer cells where they live. So it's pretty cool. And it is used, it's commercially available, again, it's only used in men who've exhausted other previous lines of treatment. And that would include

castration. You know, it's for patients with metastatic. In other words, it's spread out of the prostate and castration-resistant cancer. And I don't mean they go in and they chop people's balls out, although at one time they did do that. We have medications now that will

cause chemical castration. And they also have to have a positive PET scan, which they will, if they're, you know, if they have living metastatic tumor in their bone. And they also, there's other criteria. They had to do the androgen receptor

pathway targeting agents like I already talked about. That would be, you know, your lupron and stuff like that, the chemical castration. But they also have had to try taxane based chemotherapy. So there's a lot of things you, you know, hoops you got to jump through before you can get this

stuff. We used to use the radium 23 and the stratium 69, just for men who had widespread boney tumors that were painful, and it would improve their pain. Now, they're using the Lutetian 177 has the approval to be sold as increasing lifespan. And it's shown to extend patients' lives by, on average, for months. But that's average.

So you've got some people that can go for years, and some people it doesn't do so much. So anyway, so I'm really glad that this worked for him, and, you know, every day is, a gift, in my opinion. I think every day's a miracle, and he should enjoy every day that he's got from that. So, you know, and particularly being symptom-free. Now, because they said, oh,

another journalist that doesn't understand palliative medicine, he was sent to a palliative medicine provider. It doesn't mean he was on, quote, unquote, end-of-life care, but they just said that his tumor was not curable, and he saw a palliative medicine

person. Palliative medicine people are not hospice. They can see someone from the beginning of their illness till the very end. And it might include hospice. You know, so anyway, DNP, Carissa and I

know about this stuff pretty intimately. And the confusion that people have when people are sent to palliative medicine, they go, oh, I must be dying. And that's not correct. And that's not even true in hospice. You don't have to be dying to go into hospice. you just have to not be choosing curative or life- prolonging treatment and then have a six-month prognosis.

Whatever that is, you don't have to die in six months. We've had people in hospice for years and years and years before. But it's just at every recertification period, they have to meet those criteria. Okay. That's it. All right. Questions, comments about. I've got a comment.

Yeah. And a question. Okay. You want to, which one do you want first? I've got, so we've got principal. It won't make any sense. Neither one don't make any sense. Principal uncertainty.

Is this used exclusively for prostate cancer? That's a good question. Right now, that's what it's indicated for, because that's a great question. I've wondered about other bony tumors as well, these drugs. So stay tuned on that. Cool. Comment. Or stand, what is it?

Stand down and stand by, as was once famously said by. Yes. But we'll know more. Sounds like a military. thing to me. No, you know, there's an old drive-by-trucker song called Eighteen Wheels of Love. Yeah. And the song is about the lead singer's mom who fell in love with this truck driver that was placed on hospice care. Okay. And wound up being able to, thanks to modern medicine and great health care, was able to work through the hospice care and actually

wound up living a long healthy life. That's a true story. Yeah. It's a great song. I do think that people who are comfortable live longer than people who are suffering. So I think that in any case, hospice, if you were a candidate for it, you know, if they've said, we don't have anything else for this, and you're choosing not to pursue curative or lifelong treatment, I think they are the ones that are specialty trained in comfort measures. and I think that I really do think people live longer if they're under that kind of care. I just looked up, Lutetium-177 therapy is right now only used for men with prostate cancers who have tried for other treatments. I think, surely to goodness, they'll be doing research on other bone cancers. You know, breast cancer can metastasized a bone.

Lots of tumors can, but I've only seen these things used in prostate cancer. And honestly, I've wondered about that. I've never taken the time to research why that is if the tumors are different or if it's just all the research is driven by men. And of course, they're going to go for what, you know, affects them first. We'll find out. All right. Will you send me a note on that, Dr. Scott, to remind me to look into why these things are only used in prostate cancer? Thank you, sir.

The brand name for the Lutetium 177 is Pluvicto. So Gort Klahtu Pluvicto Nicto Remember anybody know that reference?

No No Nope Okay Very good I'll give myself this thing Day the Earth stood still

Everybody Okay So Yeah So An update on your old pal, Dr. Steve, my bronchiectasis is back, acting up again because it is allergy season.

You get influenza and influenza. You get inflammation in the old lungs. So I've been coughing my full head off. And also, my doctor found that I have elevated red blood cell count to the point where he was a little bit alarmed and took me off of my testosterone supplement as the first. step, and I'm going through fucking Andropause. Nice.

And, yeah, it's fun. You know, the hot flashes and, you know, depression. How high was it? It was pretty high. Mark, well, okay. So, um... Because it's usually a little bit high right after you've taken your injection.

Well, I wasn't taking injections. I was doing the gel. So he switched me to the injections, and, but I haven't started that yet. So anyway... Can you give blood to alleviate that? Well, yeah, if I, yes, if I have certain conditions that cause elevated red blood cells, then yeah, I can just donate blood, and then they just throw it away. There is a whole bunch of different effing things I'd just as soon not go into what it could be, but that's, I think that's why I've been slack on getting shows up on the podcast and somebody that we've been good about. doing the serious xm show but i've been really slack about that and patreon and a whole lot of

other fucking shit in my life so i'm um also have decided and i'm only saying this because i think other people should consider it uh going away for a week and just working on me you know i can go to therapy for an hour every 10 days and that's great and the whole time you're in there your phone's buzzing that hey dr steve hey doctor steve hey doctor steve hey doctor Give myself a bell. It's absolutely true. And, you know, I'd flip it over, and some things I go, I'm so sorry, I've got to take this kind of thing. And I can do other kinds of therapy for, you know, one day.

And then at night I can doom scroll all night instead of doing things that are good for me. So I think if I just go for a week, I think that's all I'll need is a week. I'm going to go to this Flup-D-Doo retreat and they said, well, we have 80 things you can choose from. It's like, that's my problem. I don't need 80 things to pick from. I need

nothing. A charismatic cult leader to tell me what I need to do to fix myself. Drink the Kool-Aid, Dr. Seney. I'm almost at this point. Ready for the Kool-Lade? Well, I'm not, yeah, that too. I mean, seriously.

A special Kool-Lade. But I'm thinking about, you know, that's what I need, so they said, okay, well, we can do that too. So anyway, anyway, so there you go. That's your old pal's update. Let's make special Kool-Aid. I've got, I can probably hook you up. Really? Let's do it. Oh, yeah. What are we talking about?

Infused with, what? Are we micro-dosing or are we? I don't need any more of your CBD right now. No, this won't be. CBCD, this is a real greenery. Real greenery. He's being all mysterious. Okay. What I need is magic mushrooms. That's what I need. That's all you had to say.

We'll take care of that, too. All right. You have, oh, okay. No, no, no, no, no, don't know anything about that. For God's sake. I know nothing about it. All right. Let's, um, let's, um, one thing.

Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. Well, but before we do, Tacey, do you have topic time? I do have topic time, so it's time for everyone to go to the restaurant. 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. I'm sorry, I stepped all over what you were saying with the intro. What were you saying? It's time for everybody to go take a shit. To the restroom? No, that's not true. Well, hello everyone. Tiny organ, long-lasting pain. Mystery of

chronic appendicitis. I don't like that. So this lady was just 15 years old when she developed bouts of gnawing pain in her lower her belly so bad, she would have to lie in the fetal position for hours. Every few weeks, and for the next two decades, the sensation would return, disabling her. And she says she's been through labor, and she would say it was the worst pain, and it was

comparable to that. So it wasn't until college when she talked to a doctor who, without any tests, chalked it up to IBS. Yeah. That's what most people would. Yeah. And she threw her hands up and said, nobody's going to be able to figure this out.

This is just the way I live. And it would take nearly 20 years of pain, regular on-and-off episodes that could span weeks, months, or years. Studies have found that it occurs in about 1% of all cases of appendicitis and affects adults and children alike. It's almost always acute, and it occurs in 7% of the U.S. population with 250,000 cases reported. You mean appendicitis is almost always acute, yeah, yeah.

Most are diagnosed between 10 and 30 years old. Both chronic and acute versions cause similar symptoms. You know, pain begins around the belly button and eventually moves to the lower right side of the belly as well as nausea, vomiting, fear, and loss of appetite. That's an important sign that it starts around the navel and then migrates down to the right lower quadrant. Now, when Ronnie B. had his, his pain was all. in his back. And the initial thought was kidney stones. I remember him talking about this,

but that was because his appendix was turned around. It was in a weird position in his body. Mine was very textbook. Yeah, you had appendicitis? So it was textbook? Literally. Would you want to expand on that? No, Tacey just said exactly what it was.

I mean, it started. It was all musty. It was. I mean, it was like such an old textbook. It started on my belly button area. Had information in it. Migrated to my right lower quadrant. And every fucking medical student had to come in and push on my belly and see if I had rebound pain.

And then I also had something when they hit the sole of my foot, it would send a pain directly to where my appendix was. And then I went for emergency surgery. That's simple reflexology. Everybody knows that, right? Right. What it is, is it's a former rebound that, you know, when you're juggling, you're jostling a different part of the body. Or is it's how sensitive it is. It got so bad.

My mom was like the next person that comes in here, I'm going to fucking kill them. Like, you cannot touch her anymore. It is the worst, did it? Yeah. I didn't know. They gave me dilauded or something. So you were fine after that. I was fine.

Yeah. CT scans and white blood cell counts, which are often elevated, and those with acute appendicitis can come back normal, making chronic cases even harder to spot. It's believed to occur once the appendix becomes partially or completely blocked by hardened balls of stool, inflammation due to infection, or other diseases of the gut or cancerous gross. I'm just surprised it doesn't have hardened balls of stool in it all the time. And why isn't everybody's appendix? Mine had crab shells in it. Was that what it was, really? Yep.

Figures. Because you're from Baltimore. Wow. How old were you? Oh, I was here. I was 18. Huh. Isn't that something?

That's busy. How many crabs you figure you ate a year when you lived in Baltimore? Oh, fuck. Yeah, exactly. And that's all. Eight million. And they opened it up and they said, we found kite-ness stuff in there, and you said crab shells, or did they come out?

And the pathologist said it's filled with. Crab shells. No, the pathologist told us. That's wild. Yeah. Wow. And I had eaten them recently, too, so. So it talks about how a lot of physicians aren't aware that this is a real medical phenomenon.

And there's no official diagnostic criteria, so it's a diagnosis of exclusion. You just got to be smart and think about it. Yeah. You know. So finally, a CT scan revealed that she had acute appendicitis. and had it removed, and she's been pain-free ever since. Oh, that sucks that she had to wait so long, though. But 20 years.

Decades. When you have somebody with just chronic abdominal pain, that's the first thing you're going to think of is irritable bowel syndrome. IBS, yep. And the thing is, what we always talk about is zebras. I mean, this is a rare disease that she's got. Most providers probably never seen it. And if they learned about it in medical school or, you know,

a nurse practitioner school or PA school, they probably forgot about it, saying, yeah, you know, what will I ever see that? So, you know, what we describe it is, or the metaphor, if you are standing in a field in Oklahoma, and you hear

the clippity clop of hoofbeats behind you, you're going to assume it's a horse, not a zebra. But it's not impossible. It could be a fucking zebra. Could be. So you can't forget about the zebras out there, my friends, medicine or it could be a giraffe without stripes true oh my god it's so cool oh my gosh that's like our little sebastian it was a cutest thing here did they ever name her no they were they had four names

they were i think taking some um they named to name it little sebastian that would be hilarious you've never seen parks and rack that's a that is we have our own little sebastian now so i'm very excited about it too yeah if you've not watched that Barks and Rick, it's worth it. It is worth it. All right. Very good. You got anything else to Ais?

Yes, I have one very quick ones. Oh, cool. Study questions if blue light blocking glasses really work. Oh, this is a good question. I saw this and I didn't read it. Yeah, despite claims by their makers, blue light glasses probably don't reduce eye strain for people who spend a lot of time

looking at computer screens or their phones. A new study says, the glasses probably don't improve where sleep habits either, according to the study, which is a published this week. And, you know, these became really popular during COVID.

And so it's probably not worth spending the extra money assholes. They sold that shit to me. I thought it worked, but it must have been a placebo. What I found I have horrible ice train. That's why it's very difficult for me to take an eight-hour computer exam

because you're focused but my you know we have to recertify every X number of years and they put the x-rays at the very end and by then I can't see shit it's just all it's all blurry and messy and what my ophthalmologist said was it's because you're focused on the screen it's not actually that you're straining as long as your refraction is right in your glasses he said use a an eye drop called Sistine Ultra and when I started using using that. 90% of that quote unquote eye strain went away. He said it's really what it is is dry eyes. Oh, okay. Cool. And it feels like you're straining, and you probably are because you're refracting a little bit different because you don't have that film of

fluid over your eye, but that made a huge difference, but I pay a lot of money for these stupid blue blockers. And they make me look weird. You know, if I wear them on like a video podcast or something that's got light.

I was on one of them for the state of Tennessee and they made me take my glasses on because they were recording it for like broadcast for something in a minute ago. Because yeah, I just looked weird. It looked like I was wearing blue sunglasses. Anyway, all right, well, okay, fuck off with that. And they can fuck right off with, I wonder

if taking the blue pixels out makes a difference. When you're, you know, at night, when you're doom scrolling, does that keep you, you know, because the blue pixel is supposed to keep you up. I have converted my Kindle because I read at night. By the way, I'm reading a three-body problem, which is an amazing science fiction book. But I have it set so that the background is black and the characters are white.

And that way there's very little white, and then I turn off the blue pixels. You can do that. And that seems to, it doesn't keep me up. I'll tell you, I get my money's worth reading a book because I'll buy a book on my Kindle. and I will literally read one or two pages before I fall asleep, so it takes me six months to finish a novel or something if I'm just reading in bed. So, you know, that 12 bucks you paid for it goes a long way.

Yep, I mean you do that. Great. All right. Well, thank you, Tacey. Those were very good. You're welcome. You're welcome. Let's get back to...

Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. All right. Let's see here. Uh-oh. Oh, no. Hey, Dr. Steve. This is Matt.

I'm Cassidy's dad. We met a while back at Carl's get together. I had a minute. Okay. Okay, Matt. Nice to meet you. A question for you. Again.

It's about the Navaj that I heard you recommend on your show. I started trying to use it because I've had allergies through the years. Oh. I found it really helped. But when I first got it, I could not get it to work, and I ended up having to call their customer service line. Okay. I have not listened to this phone call. I knew what it was about, but I'm going to bet.

I'm going to bet it was a bad battery. And I've told them a couple of times that we've had a bunch of people that buy them and they have to immediately replace the batteries because they sit on the shelf for too long. And a lot of places will have a little plastic tab that you pull out that will keep the batteries from going dead. And I remember talking to Martin about this, the former owner of Navaji sold out about it. And there was a reason why they couldn't do it, and I don't remember what it was. but I would just pack the batteries separately.

Yeah, it's not hard. Yeah, I know everybody else does that. It is weird, but anyway. And they showed me that I could reverse the flow, and it'll go one way through my nose, but not the other. Okay, so he's old valve nose. That's different, so that's a different problem. But if you do buy a Navajian, it doesn't work right away,

and you have a normal non-valular nose, then, yeah, it's going to be the battery. But anyway, I did have a deviated Some years ago I had it fixed though And I just couldn't figure out why that would be an issue I was just wondering what your opinion would be on that Yeah, that's wild So he has a valve

Some weird wild stuff Yeah, Johnny Carson I need to put that on here That'd be a good job That's a weird wild stuff It's weird wild stuff Um The His nose acts like a diode

It only allows flow in one direction So, but, yeah, so I guess a lot of people don't read the instructions, but that thing, you can flip the nose nipples. And I don't know what else to call them. They're just nose nipples. You can flip them and rotate them 180 degrees, and then the flow will go the other way. So when I use the nivage, which, by the way, you can check it out at stuff. Dottersteve.com just scroll down and you can see it. but I will do half of the saline flowing one way

and then I'll flip it around and do it the other half flowing the other way. It seems like that kind of makes sense it would clean out your nose a little bit better. For those that don't know what we're talking about, it's basically a motorized netty pot. You don't have to lean over the sink and attain a certain position.

It shoots saline in one nostril and sucks it out the other one. It was brilliant, brilliant design. Tacey was a skeptic. I bought her one. She loved it. Mel B. Did one on the show. You can go to our YouTube channel,

YouTube.com slash at Weird Medicine. And you can see N.P. Mel B. Who hated putting things in her nose just end up falling in love with the Navaj. So we don't have anything to do with them. But what? Are you okay? Yeah.

Sorry. I just thought about hating, putting things in places. Well, we've got to talk about that. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Thank you for remembering. But anyway, so check out the nabash.

Now, last week, we talked about that, what is it, cock or coke or toke or something, headache thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't matter, but let's not say the name. But anyway, and what it was, it looked like something that you would clean a lens with. Or an infant's nose out. Yeah, like a nasal. nasal suction, what do you call that, syringe, bulb, bulb syringe.

Or like an ear cleaning thing, but they had a tube on the end of it, and then an ear nipple. Yes. That you could shove in your ear. Another nipple reference. Of course. You should get your own bell for that. Everything is nipples to me. So anyway, so now DNP Carissa had a headache, and you usually don't have headaches, but you have them every once.

while, right? And you tried it. So because we didn't say the name, or we're not trying to disparage their product or promote their product, I'm just curious if it did anything. Because you showed up and you look, you look, you know, delightful, but I don't know, I can't tell if your head still hurts. My head still hurts some. It doesn't hurt as bad, but I've had a lot of caffeine and a lot of ibuprofen. I had no immediate relief from the use of the device, ear nipple. So tell me what happened. You put the ear nipple in there, and then how does it function? You compress the bulb.

You put the ear nipple in your ear. And then you let go, and it just holds negative pressure in your ear. Yes. Yeah. And then you clamp down and take it out, and then that's it. That's the whole thing? That's it. You're not supposed to do it a certain number of times or for a certain duration?

No, I mean, it gives you different options. You can put it in and then, no. It's always deflated when you put it in There's a way to do it differently And I don't know I did not like it I fucking hated it I did it in both ears

Just for this My left ear is really Like I can't stand anything To even touch it Let alone be in it Because I had so many ear infections As a child I have scar tissue

And all kinds of fucked up shit On my ear drum Thing Yeah Your tympatic membrane My ear drum thing That sounds more legit I don't have a brain yet today.

But anyways, I could tolerate it better in my right ear. So with an N of 1, we did not. Not a glowing review. We proved the null hypothesis, but it's only an N of 1. It didn't make it worse. And I had my own hypothesis. Correct. Of why I had the headache.

What was your hypothesis of why you had the headache? Tension. Okay. So I don't think that this thing would work for that. Correct. I had tension from like muscles, muscle neck tension that is radiating up to my head. Right. Muscle tension, not emotional tension.

Right. So much. Okay. I think this thing might help if someone had a chronically retracted eardrum and had head pain from negative pressure in the middle ear. Maybe it would help to draw air up into, you know, through the eustachian tube. if they were unable to pop their ear. I think it might help for that, but I just don't see. Now, Dr. Scott, you're the expert on weird, you know,

if you put a needle in between my first and second finger, somehow that helps a headache and stuff like that. So is there anything in traditional Chinese medicine that would make sense given this thing? I can't, you know, I've, because I know people sell acupuncture-like things to people. Well, but it's not really, you know, a similar thing. It's just another odd thing.

You do cupping and mock Sebastian and stuff on. Well, yeah, but I don't do cupping on an eardrum. Right. No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to last. It was being like, oh, kapop. Can you hear that? I can see it right now. Oh, but you could do cupping tomorrow.

We could do cupping on the neck and shoulders, which I would do for a tension headache. But, you know, first I would do it for attention? For attention, a.e. tension headache. But, you know, it might. I was, the only thing I could figure is maybe a sinus headache, you know. Yeah, I mean, I could maybe see that. I mean, it felt very nice at first, like, yeah. On this ear, my right ear.

I'd be interested to see if anybody has had some good results with that. I should try it on my right ear, because I've torn my right eardrum twice. And it's also, it's scar and it's miserable. I will give them credit. They're not charging an arm and a leg for it. I see a lot of stuff on the Internet. Then it's way, way, way over. And so I'll give them credit for that.

And maybe it'll help some people. Yeah, let's hope some. Didn't help DNP, Carissa. But that is an anecdotal. That's anecdotal evidence. She needs a lot more help than a little suction in the ear, I'm pretty sure. Truth, facts. All right.

I don't know where to find the help I need. It's going to take a team, right? I'm going to a week-long retreat that may end up being a longer than a week. They may throw him in and lock the door behind. Yeah, that's fine. See you in the ear. It's okay. Certain someone threatened to send me away to a convent, so.

What? Who was that? Can you say? My therapist. Oh, really? Your therapist was going to send you to a convent? What good would that? What kind of therapist is this?

What good would that do? She just wanted to send me. a way where I didn't have contact with anything or anyone. Yeah, fair. That's reasonable. Yeah. All right. You ready to take another call? Does it do it?

All right. We may have done this one before, but... Salasca. Dr. Steve. Oh, we did? Crew. No, I didn't go to Thailand. Actually... Did we do this one about Traveler's diarrhea? Yes. Okay. All right. I hope you had a great trip, man. And whatever we told you was decent.

I have a question regarding hormone replacement therapy. I see a nurse practitioner who kind of knows what he's. He's doing. I've had to research stuff and request things on my own. I don't like testosterone the way it made me feel and the side effects, but my levels are kind of low with the growth hormone. He mentioned it's really good, but he would take it himself.

His levels, I'm sure, way better than mine. He's about my age anyway, but he said it would be too expensive for himself, but it's not too expensive, and he knows he could be on it. Other people that practice can be on it. It's kind of a large practice. But I think he's scared he's going to get sued or cancer or something. I've made another appointment with him, so I'm going to go to a doctor and I've been talking to. What time is the appointment?

What time and day is? What's the deal with that? I can just see him that my insurance will pay for it, and I can go to regular pharmacy instead of going to one of these stupid farm on places that charge you a bunch of money and want you to use their own stupid pharmacy and ship their stuff through the mail. I don't disagree about it. I think I can lay out a good case for me to do it. The fact that I'm not for cancer, I'll do any test.

Yeah. Okay. I'm not 100% sure what he's asking, but if you have low testosterone, check. The first thing to do is figure out why do you have it. A lot of people just, they don't check. So there's two ways it can happen. Either your testicles are not being told to make testosterone or they're not able to. Right.

That's really the only two. And so the first, or the former is caused by pituitary problem. So check pituitary hormones. And then the second is caused by, you know, just lazy testicles. Now, if you have a pituitary problem, we want to look and see why, what's going on. So they'll do an MRI of your brain. See if you have something going on with your pituitary. But assume it's regular garden variety, low testosterone.

you know, hypogonadism. There's a couple things you can do. You can just replace the testosterone, but he didn't like that. You give somebody testosterone. What that does is it shuts the testicles down even further because they just go, well, what are we even here for? You know, obviously someone else is doing our job for us, so we're just going to relax, and your testicles will decrease in size and they will cease to function. The other thing, though, and he was talking about growth hormone, don't use that.

there is a thing called chlomaphene. And chlomaphene citrate is a drug that they use to get women to ovulate, but also works in men to get without going through the whole mechanism to get the testicles to make their own testosterone. In other words, it wakes them up and causes them to be less lazy. And the great thing about that is if you're interested in maintaining fertility, you will continue to make sperm cells. whereas if you do testosterone replacement therapy, that will eventually cease. The other thing is that your testicles will not get smaller. They'll still be big and meaty and juicy, you know, nuts in your scrotum that you can, you know, flap around and stuff.

So you still have that. I'm just trying to see if you guys are listening. Why do you flap around? You know. Okay. Just scary it. Yeah. When you get my age,

the scrotums like saltwater taffies, you know, just paste it against your thigh. Oh, God. That's why I wear jockeys and not briefs. Anyway, so you, so clomapine might be the answer. Your testosterone comes up. Your testicles still function. You still make sperm. And you still got nice, big, juicy, you know, nads.

Anyway, so that might be the answer. Might be, yep. So what I would recommend is go, I get it, you go to these places where they sell bioidentical hormones and all that stuff, and it is enticing, it's expensive. There are things that your insurance will pay for. Tacey, when you go to a bioidentical hormone place, does insurance pay for the medication that they sell you? I mean, I guess it depends on the insurance. Mine did when I went to one. Really?

Yeah, it covered it. I guess the insurance we have now probably would not. Always the dig on my insurance. Always. Well, it is shit. It's never good not. I have the same. I mean, you have to admit my insurance before was pretty premium.

You had the platinum stuff. It was pretty, pretty good. Yeah. A little saucy. A little saucy. All right. Hey, Dr. Steve, it's Mike from the. New York again.

Hey, Mike. I'm calling on dreaming. I know you've spoken about this in the past. Last night, I had a dream. I was working in a supermarket, like I used to do, and a display crashed. And just as the display crashed, I was awakened by the sound of thunder in the reality. We did do this one. I've got to do better at clearing these things out.

We've done this one, right? Okay. Well, everybody's looking at quick. I know that you've spoken about this before, but how does that work with your mindset where you're dreaming and you hear a noise that's really a reality noise? Yes. Is it likened to, let's say, the body-worn cameras, the police fare? When I was a kid, this used to happen more often, that I would hear people talking in my house and then I would have dreams. that monsters were saying those things,

and then I'd wake up and it'd be my dad or something. Or I would hear the alarm go off, and it would be in my dream. It'd be like a telephone, and I'd try to pick it up, and then I'd wake up, and I'd hear the alarm. It doesn't really do that anymore. You know, when my alarm goes off, I just wake up.

And when there's thunder and stuff, it doesn't invade my dreams anymore. So, I mean, dreaming when you're young is different than dreaming when you're old. There's something different about it. and I've had fewer hypnopompic episodes since I got older and all that kind of stuff. But it is fascinating. I mean, the brain is fascinating.

There is a vigilance circuit in the brain, and most of the time it will work. If your dog starts barking, you'll wake up. If there's a weird sound in your house, you'll wake up. Obviously, it doesn't always work because, you know, people can sometimes, if they're used to being in your house, they can, you know, they can come in and you won't wake up. My kids, now when they come in, the dogs don't bark. Nope. And I don't wake up.

And it's like, could somebody else pull that off? And I don't think so. I think it is, there's just a, you know, a certain cadence to how the kid puts the key in the lock, you know, and how he turns it and opens the door. And there's just a... And where they go next because they know where they're going. Yes, there's a cadence. to all that stuff that a stranger would not have.

But, yeah, it's weird. Well, and I think we've talked about it and I think you're right, but it's, you know, the brain compartmentalizing those things and knowing that this is normal. Right. And says, hey, this is normal. Continue to sleep. Everything's cool. But it'll fuck up that up, though, too

sometimes. Like when I'm driving from North Virginia to, you know, down the mountain, and then my brain goes, yeah, it's normal to just go to sleep right now. Totally fine. Yours is a little ass backwards occasionally, but, you know. Totally fine.

At least it's, at least it's consistent. Right now on a cliff going 60 miles an hour. Take our chances. That's right. Fucking asshole brain. Fucking asshole. What is that? It does bad stuff, man.

It does do bad stuff. My right brain and my left brain are always arguing. You know, the left brain's like, well, no, you know, data shows. and the right brain's like, I just had a flashback of Animal House where the devil's on the one shoulder and they, oh, come on, you know you want to. So the answer is, Mike, we have no clue.

We just know that there is. Great question. No answers. There are circuits in the brain that do certain things, and there is a vigilant circuit, and it works kind of okay most of the time. Sometimes it will take in stimuli, and if it doesn't see them as threatening, it'll pass it along to the dream module, and the dream module will incorporate it. Unless it gets hacked. Yeah.

You know, yours has been hacked, I'm afraid. I would look forward to that. I'm not sure who, but somebody hacked his brain error, I think. I would love for somebody to hack my brain. No, lower to be terrible. No, I mean, for real. You know, Elon's been talking about having a chip inserted in your brain so that you could control a computer. things and controlled devices

and so how cool would it be to just think, oh, it's hot in here, turn the thermostat down. But I've also seen that movie. I think that's why you have, you know. I've also seen that movie when the guy, you know, the chip takes over and it's a problem. It's a problem.

So anyway, all right, very good. Let's see here. Okay, this is a good one. This has been off the rails today. What's that? It's been off the rails today. It's crazy. In a good way, though. I thought this show was supposed to be off the rails.

Oh, well, fuck me. Maybe I don't know what's going on. I don't know. I'm just saying, I don't know. All right. I'm reading this article about the U.S. Supreme Court, um, stopping a guy on death row who wants to die. He doesn't want to be, um, uh, whatever.

He wants to die as be a nitrogen hypoxia. Yes, I agree with him. Hang on. What in the world, first off, what is? What would be more fun is helium hypoxia, though? but we'll talk about that you get either one of these will work well nitrous hypoxia isn't our whole atmosphere just nitrogen yes how is that going to kill him okay oh i've got a great this is such a good i'm going to give this guy a bell and is it going to be more painful than a lethal injection no isn't

you going to be like is he going to choke in that no what okay i got to give him a bell give thyself a bell never know what hit him but okay so this happened to me once I I went to, there was a church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, called Fountain Street Church, and it was very progressive and it was just, you know, it was a, you could, okay, this is how progressive it was. Number one, I saw Steppenwolf and I saw the Grateful Dead in concert in the sanctuary. Oh, wow. And when you went to a youth group, you could smoke cigarettes.

So that's how crazy it was. So anyway, but they had a big tank of helium. And I, being the stupid jokester that I am, you know, started filling up balloons and then I would suck the air. Now, when you suck in helium, your body can't tell the difference between it and oxygenated air. Okay. And it feels normal to you. You know, if you hold your breath, you know, everything goes weird because your body knows that carbon dioxide is increasing. Okay.

But if you inhale helium or any other neutral gas that won't sustain life, your body can't tell that's what it is, particularly if it's odorless and colorless, like helium and nitrogen are. So I kept inhaling it and, hey, how are you? You know, we represent the, you know, all the, I was being hilarious. And the next thing I knew, I was waking up on the ground. Oh, no. Because what had happened was I had taken in so much helium and not enough oxygen. that I lost consciousness and you can do the same thing with nitrogen

you could do it with any inert gas that doesn't, you know, so what you would do if you were, and yes, the atmosphere is 70x% nitrogen, it's that 21% oxygen that is the key, right? Yeah, she's just paying attention. So who are you texting there, D&P, Chris? I'm not texting anyone. I'm looking up what's in keyboard cleaner because this question made me think about...

Keyboard cleaner? Yes. Oh, yeah, like the spray? The spray where people huff that shit and... Aha, yeah, so I would love to know what's in that. Yeah, I'm sorry. No, no, no, no. Thank you.

I was kind of paying attention just going down a different rabbit hole. Let me know if you find something interesting on that because I find that interesting as well. It's like we used to huff tallywene. That was the gas and it's the solvent that's in. that used to be in airplane glue. Difluoroethane. That's about it. Okay, diphthorothane and do it too.

Psychoactive properties. My father huffed that and went into Torsods. Is that right? So Torsods being a crazy heart rhythm that if sustain could be fatal. Oh, yeah, he went into it like five different times. So, yeah, don't do that. Yeah, don't do that. but so you could in theory take a mask that seals very well so that no oxygen is getting in and if you just gave that person pure helium they could make a couple of funny sounds and goof around and then what would happen is they would lose consciousness and if you the difference with me was when I lost consciousness I hit the floor and started breathing oxygenated air again right well if you

don't breathe oxygenated air and you continue to breathe the helium or nitrogen, you would just not ever wake up and eventually your heart would stop. I honestly, I mean, I'm not, I don't think we should be killing people, that the state should be killing people. But if I were put in that position, I would say, yeah, that would be a pretty good way to go. And it would be really quick, too. And that way, you don't have, because companies do not want to sell. their drug to

prisons. So this is a whole thing about lethal injection is they don't want to sell their drug to prisons because they don't want to be associated with death penalty and stuff like that because they're political ramifications to that. But it would be very hard to say

well, we're not going to sell tanks of nitrogen because they're all over the place. So why they don't do it? I don't know. I don't know why, but they don't. But I agree with that guy. I think that would be a decent way to go if you had to go, you know. Sure. All right?

All right. Well, what else? We've got punched to the liver, but we've only got like 30 seconds to do. So punching someone to the liver, don't do that. I love that. I got a quick one if you want it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a quick one.

Diesel Child, my doc switched me from IM testosterone to subcue testosterone. Is there anything I should be worried about? To subcue testosterone? Yeah, the answer is probably not. No, I wouldn't think so. I am being intramuscular. Subcube would be less painful. Much less painful, yeah.

It's just going to dissolve under the skin. You should be good, D.C. I'll look into it and make sure that we're telling you the right thing. Well, before we go, there is a question from principled uncertainty, one of our Irish brothers, in the fluid family regarding. Dopamine fasting, he said, is dopamine fasting worth doing? Well, again, the question is, what do you want to accomplish? But dopamine fasting was created by this California psychiatrist,

which should tell you something right there, Cameron Sipa. And it doesn't have a whole lot to do with fasting or dopamine. And so... Ew. What? To reduce pleasure? sensitivity. Well, what it is is, yeah, dopamine's

a mechanism explains how addiction can become reinforced and makes for a catchy title, you know, but that's about it. So the thinking behind a dopamine fast is using cognitive behavioral therapy,

which we endorse, we become less dominated by unhealthy stimuli. And that is text messages, YouTube notifications, beeps, rings, and all that so I've got all my notifications turned down and I just check my phone periodically

which is why I tell people just call me so instead of automatically responding to these cues we ought to allow our brains to take breaks and reset from this but you can't fast from a naturally occurring brain chemical and lots of people have misinterpreted

the science to view dopamine as if it were heroin or cocaine, and they give themselves a tolerance break so that the pleasures of whatever they're depriving themselves of food, sex, human contact will be more intense or vivid when they're consumed again. This wasn't the intent of the original person. So, yeah, you know, misunderstanding science causes maladaptive behaviors, and that's not me saying that.

That's Harvard and where I'm at .edu where I'm getting this from. And, you know, but taking time out for mental rejuvenation is never a bad thing, but it's not anything new. So I would say, there you go. And to hell with that. To hell with it is. Dopamine fasting. I don't want to reduce the pleasure in my life. I just want to reduce shitty pleasure.

I mean, doom scrolling is pleasurable, but it's a shitty pleasure, unless I run across two-key broadcasting live, and then I always have to click in there. Then that's different. And then I get pleasure from sending super chats from Myrtle. And I call this Myrtle today on his show. He had somebody on his show, and Myrtle goes in. It's like, is this Swamp Shop? I got me a chair old.

Oh, me, Amos sat in and I don't want to sit on him no more. Oh, no. And she had, and I got a load of manure, and it's a good, but it's human manure. I'll tell you that, but it's high quality. So, anyway, all right, you kind of have to be there. All right. Obviously. Thanks.

Always go to Dr. Scott. Tacey, D.N.P. Carissa. Thank you. Thanks to everyone who's made this show happen over the year. Listen to our Sirius XM show on the Faction Talk channel, SiriusXM Channel 103, Saturdays at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern on demand. And other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy.

Go to our website at Dr.steve.com for schedules, podcasts, and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoking, get off your asses and get some exercise. We'll see you in one week. Well, wait a minute. I do want to say thank you to our moderators in the Fluid family. And that would be Dr. Scott, but also Sean P. Yo.

And Amanda Davidson, did you assign anyone else to be a moderator? Because it's obviously you're doing that because I haven't ever looked at it. Have you assigned any miles? Not that I'm aware that I've... 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 Breed Medicine. Goodbye, everyone.

Pretty seriously how we figure that up there.