Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 569 - Taurine Hydrocele

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

Dr Steve, Dr Scott, and Tacie discuss: strokes and air pollution new depression drug and it's not ketamine MINOCA heart attacks an@l fistula taurine and seizures sleep is weird ketamine again tension headaches testicular "fluid" masses Please visit: stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) simplyherbals.net/cbd-sinus-rinse (the best he's ever made. Seriously.) tweakedaudio.com (use offer code "FLUID" for 33% off!) 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

Your show was better when you had medical questions. AIDS. Can you please stop bullshitting and get to the question? Scorn and defiance. Slight regard. Contempt. And anything that might not misbecome the mighty sender, does he prize you, aren't?

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 entitled to? I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolivir, stripping from my nose.

I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my impetable woes. I want to take my brain out and blasted with the wave, an ultrasonic, agographic, and a pulsating shave, I want a magic pill all my ailments, the health equivalent to 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, from downtown Bedabler City. It's weird medicine, the first and still only

on censored medical show. In the history of broadcast radio, now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal. Dr. Scott, the traditional Chinese medicine provider, gives me street cred with the wacko alternative medicine assholes. Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. And my partner in all things, Tacey.

Hello, Tacey. Hello. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the Internet. If you have a question, you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider. If you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call. 347-766-4-33-23. That's 347. Poo-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 can buy. 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. All right, very good. Don't forget to check out stuff.com.com. Stuff.com.com.com. By the way, whoever bought 20 grand in office furniture using stuff.doctrsteve.com

I love you. Let me know who you are. I love you, too. And if you can just tell me, like, one of the things that you bought, I'll send you some merch because, you know, we'll have people going, oh, I'm the one that sent that to you. Anyway, we really appreciate that. It's going to help a lot for the old Christmas

this year. But thank you for doing that. It's stuff.com. Check out Rodi, R-O-A-D-I-E dot Dr. Steve.com. This is the time when you're starting to think about the holidays, be it Hanukkah, be it Festivus, be it Kwanza, be it, you know, Eid, be it Christmas. Oh, yeah, Christmas. Thank you, Casey. Give yourself a bell.

Then you're looking for gifts and Rodee. Dottersteve.com. very inexpensive gifts for the guitar and bass players and mandolin players in your life that they will absolutely love. And if you have an instrument and you don't know how to play it, they now have the Rodee coach and it'll teach you how to play. So Carissa, who has been on this show, has a Rody coach because they sent us a trial one and she's learning to play the ukulele.

Now she promised that she would come in and, play a duet with us or a, well, a trio with us, whatever. She's going to do a song with us on the ukulele. And so I'm looking forward to that. She's never touched an instrument in her life. Nothing. Complete ineptitude when it comes to music. So check that out.

Rode, R-O-A-D-I-E. Dr.steve.com. Or just go to stuff. Dottersteve.com and scroll down, you'll see the Rodey tuner. check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. And then Tacey and I do a Patreon, patreon.com slash weird medicine, which is loads of fun. It's exclusive content, stuff that you can't get anywhere else. And really, if you call in a question for the Patreon show, 100% of those, get answered,

unlike the regular show where we're going back and listening to voice mails from 10 years ago or even longer sometimes. All right? Anything else? Oh, and cameo. Let me do cameos for you. I love to do them. They're cheap. I'm the cheapest cameo on the platform. I would charge nothing if they would let me. It's just for fun. But all the money goes to a very worthy cause. It goes straight into my ham radio bank account that's in a different bank where I'm going to buy my antenna and stuff to do moon bounce from.

So, very good, a very good cause. Yeah. For the cause of ham radio. All right? Mm-hmm. You know what I was thinking, Tase? What's what? We should hunt down the old Ron and Fez bits where they used to do Dr. Steve's wife.

Do you remember that? Because the first time you met Ron Bennington outside Bar 9, He gave you a ration of shit, very good natured, that was absolutely brilliant. Yeah. And then he took it to the air, and you had Dr. Steve's racist wife, anti-Semitic wife, which, of course, Tasey is none of those things. And then we had the East Tennessee Ed thing, which is our friend Todd, who went on a blind date with Fez, but neither one of them knew it. And there was that whole thing, which the one time that I've heard Ron laugh uncontrollably was during the East Tennessee Ed thing. So I think that we need to dig that stuff up because that was fun.

Those were early days. Fun times. Yeah. Before the whole joint Saturday night show that led to the downfall of our partnership. That's a whole other story I would tell that story too So anyway Yeah it would be

It would be loads of fun to do that Because Tacey was kind of A topic of conversation For quite a while Anyway All right That was then This is now

Do you have topics for us today 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. I think that's probably enough of an intro. The intro is going a little long.

By the way, that is Carl Hamburger from WATP on the guitar, doing the Harrison Young theme song, which he was challenged to do, and he rose to the challenge. He was quite a brilliant guitarist, despite what certain people say. Yeah. But anyway, go ahead.

Okay, well, hello, everyone. Hello. Hello. So short-term exposure to air pollution can raise stroke risk. What? The risk of stroke increases by as much as 30% within five days of being exposed to air pollution. What kind of air pollution?

Well, let me get to that. Okay, there you go. Researchers looked at 110 observational studies from around the world that noted when strokes happen and the concentrations of common pollutants in the air within five days, people having a stroke. It was a meta-analysis published in neurology. air pollution's impact on human health extends beyond the lung and eyes. It also involves the brain and cardiovascular system. Yeah, that's really interesting.

So what they did was this is one of those studies like, does a full moon cause more babies to be born? Because the OBGYN people will tell you, oh, yeah, it's a full noon. You can sure tell it's full moon. We had a crazy night. It turns out that's actually a confirmation bias. that if they have a crazy night and they go out and they see a full moon, they'll go, yep, see. But any other night they have a crazy night, if they don't see a full moon, they don't think about it.

Because they've done studies on it, and full moon's got nothing to do with any of that show. Isn't that wild? Now, the term lunacy comes from the moon cycle, but it wasn't that kind of moon cycle. It was women's moon cycle, and lunacy was a way of trying to figure out what... egregious understatement. The hell cause PMS. Come on. Shitheads.

To explain PMS because it would come every 28 days on average, and the moon comes every 28 days. Everybody thought that the moon and PMS were somehow related, and hence the name, lunacy. So what they did the same thing with this was we have lots of data on air pollutant levels, going back decades, and we have lots of data on stroke incidents. So you can just mush the two together and see if there is a correlation. You can't make a statement that there's causation involved.

But what they found was it was short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide was linked to 33% increased risk of death from stroke, which sounds as huge. But what were the absolute numbers? Did they give the absolute numbers in that taste? Just 18 million cases of ischemic stroke. Okay. The most common type of stroke, which is caused by blood caught traveling to the brain. Correct. So if, so 18,000 in a year?

Is that what they're saying? That's the incident. 18 million cases. No, the meta-analysis included 18 million cases, so they did not give a time period. Researchers found that the stroke risk was nearly 30% higher when people had been exposed to nitrogen dioxide up to five days prior. For carbon monoxide, the risk was

26% higher. For sulfur dioxide, 15% higher, and for ozone, 5% higher. And of course, they are turning this around to make it a discussion of what?

Climate change? Yep. I believe that is belleworthy. I believe it is. No, that's... Give myself a bell. You get the bell. There you go.

But of course, it's turned around to be a discussion about climate change. Short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide was linked to a 33% higher risk of dying from stroke. For sulfur dioxide, it was 60% higher. What is the absolute numbers, though? I've got to be able to calculate the number needed to harm. Well, tough shit. Now I'm looking for the. Okay.

I'm looking for the article itself, and while you're doing that, I'll see if I can crunch the numbers real quick. If I can't, I'll do it on a future show, but it might be a good one for my medical journalism criticism show. This is, I thought, was very interesting. A new depression drug avoids unfortunate side effects that others have. Is it called ketamine? No, it's FDA-approved. and it's a new drug. It's not out yet. Okay.

It's created by the Houston-based drug maker Fabry Kramer. The drug will be the first and only approved antidepressant with a novel mechanism of action that selectively targets the serotonin 1A receptor. Still serotonin, but anyway, yeah, okay. Other types of antidepressant medication, you know, you get sexual side effects and weight gain. The company said the most frequent side effects found in the trial involving 5,000 people were mild and brief periods of dizziness and nausea. And it's called EXXUA. Is that the brand name or is that the experimental name? And it should be available in pharmacies by early 2024.

I guess so. Wow. Now, the FDA did turn down these applications three times because of failed. studies. Yeah, that's a little concerning to me. Decades long, regulatory odyssey ends with FDA nod for Fobre. I can't be Fawbray. Is it Fabre Cromer or something like that?

Depression Med, Exua. Why did they fail? Okay, it was rejected by the FDA twice. Three times is the turn of the millennium, yeah. Yeah, it's the generic name of it is Gepparon, G-E-P-I-R-O-N-E. And, yeah, it selectively targets serotonin-1-A receptor. Okay, so I'm, I like being more selective because what we're doing is we find a bunch of depressed people and we biopsy their brains and say, oh, well, there's more or less levels of serotonin in these patients.

brain. So instead of targeting the actual circuits that are firing in a maladaptive way that make you depressed, maybe it isn't maladaptive. Maybe there's a survival benefit to it. We know, you know, it could be. Then we just dump buckets of serotonin into their brain with these re-uptake inhibitors. So what happens is the neurons release serotonin. And instead of being brought back, those cells are very efficient. They recycle. their neurotransmitters. So once they've sent the signal, then it's reabsorbed or re-up. There's re-uptake of it, and then they can use it again. Well, this just stops the cells from re-taking them up. Hence the name re-uptake inhibitor,

and that causes a functional increase in whatever neurotransmitter you're talking about. So if it's an SSRI, it's selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor, it'll just increase serotonin. If it's an S-N-R-I, then it's serotonin and norepinephrine. Gotcha. So this is even more specific. It's just, it looks like it's targeting the receptor itself. It may stimulate it, which is, you know, that's a different way of doing it.

And it seems less like a sledgehammer, you know, just throwing buckets of chemicals into somebody's brain. So we'll see. It also says that I found this interesting. the number of Americans with major depressive disorder rose during COVID, with about 30% of adults in the U.S. having it. That's a huge number, isn't it? It is. I believe it.

I do too. Being one of them myself. So here is just, I'm just going to read a story and then just see what your thoughts are. And then we'll just go from there. Okay. And by the way, I tried to crunch those numbers on that study. I can't get the full text. So I can't see the original data.

and sometimes that's done on purpose because it's way cooler to say 30% increase than it is to say, you know, the risk is like 0.001. So I'll try to get those numbers maybe and see if we can crunch them. At some point I'll get the full text. We'll be able to do it. Anyway, go ahead and Tase. Okay. So this lady, Rita Conrad, was just saying goodbye to friends in a parking lot of a Mexican restaurant. But she began to feel fatigued and uncomfortable.

She assumed it was late hour or maybe the enchiladas she had, but when she got home, she started feeling discomfort in her back, shoulders, and chest. Okay. It wasn't a sharp stabbing pain. It was more of an uncomfortable squeezing. Correct. Then the squeezing got worse, and she started dry heaving. Her husband wanted to take her to the ER. She insisted, I'm just tired, took an aspirin, laid down.

Her symptoms eventually stopped. She was 51 and in good health. and then she was having an unusual type of heart attack called Minoka that puzzles doctors and affects women more often than men. Spell that. M-I-N-O-C-A. It's myocardial infarction with non-obstructive coronary arteries. So there's no blockages.

So a lot of times doctors just send you home. Yeah, they'll do a calf and it's like wide open. Yeah, and there's another related condition called Inoka. ischemia with non-obstructive coronary arteries. And it has the same system, symptoms, but it's usually without the heart attack. So it says it may account for 25 to 30 percent of all heart attacks in women. And a lot of times these patients are sent home because it's just some woman complaining. And they don't know what it is, but it turns out.

I mean, I'm saying they're saying that. Not you, of course. That'd be weird. It turns out, let me find this. See, these things are lumped in. We used to just call it something different. But the one that I was familiar with were the Prince Metal-type causes of heart pain and heart attack, which is spasm of the coronary artery.

And you can have spasm of the coronary artery without any blockage. If you have a little bit of blockage, you can turn it into a big blockage. Now, they're saying this Manoka can be caused by plaque that's there eroding rather than rupturing or it could be the vaso spasm. So this is sort of a broader category.

Yeah. And it's in the smaller vascular. vessels also. Right, right. It's where the plaque is. That's right. They would be more vulnerable to this. Yeah. And it says it could be due to hormones, hormone therapy, or the simple

fact that women are physically smaller than men. Yeah. Well, men can get prismetal angina too, but you treat that with a calcium channel block, or at least we used two back in the day. Anything that will keep those arteries from spasming. So it's just something to look out

for. I mean, if you're feeling it And if you're having these symptoms, you know, you need to get looked at. Even if your tests are clear. It just goes to show you that you can do all the tests and everything shows you a certain thing and you can still be 100% wrong. I used to take people into a room. When I was teaching at one of the medical schools, we had a classroom that was in the hospital. And I would have a patient that had something like,

let's say idiopathic, hypertrophic subaortic stenosis, which is exactly, exactly. It's a form of reduced blood flow caused by enlargement of the heart. And it causes a characteristic murmur and everything that the students would go in and they would listen to this person's heart and I would tell them their symptoms. and then we'd go downstairs to the blackboard, and I'd say, so characterize the murmur. Well, it goes up one, you know, and then gets smaller again. So crescendo, decrescendo.

Instead of ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch---------. Okay, so that's crescendo de-crescendo. And where did you hear it? Well, we heard it on the right sternal border, on the right side of the chest bone. And did it radiate anymore? Yeah, it radiated up into the neck, into the carotid arteries. And so we'd go through all this.

What is it? And they'd say, what's an aortic stenosis? We'd go all the way around. Aortic stenosis is caused by a calcified valve that causes narrowing. And it's all the same. It's all the same. And we would go through, everybody agree? This is aortic stenosis.

Yes, yes, yes. And then I could then make the big pronouncement. Well, you're 100% wrong. So it just shows in medicine. and all the evidence can point to somebody. You could still be wrong, so you have to just always keep that in your head just because somebody isn't presenting in a textbook manner.

For example, we love the calcium score. You go in and get a CT scan. They look at your heart, and they can tell you how much calcium is in there, and they'll scale you on a scale from zero to, what, 10,000 or whatever, and anything over 400 they're going to take a look at. well, you can have a zero and still have plaques in your heart

that could cause a heart attack that are just not calcified. You know? So you look at that. Remember, those kinds of things are screening tests. They're not definitive tests. Right. You know, so anyway.

In this thing, this Manoka that Tacey's talking about, which, by the way, you should get a bell. It's a good one. Well, it's stimulated. We just killed, you know, another five minutes talking about. So any time you do something like that, you're going to get a bell. They even cast these people and go, nope, totally normal. See you later.

And that's the completely wrong thing to do. That's something. Yeah. You know, we had a friend like that a couple years ago that had a perfect everything. Went and had a... Perfect everything. He was perfect health. No medicines, no nothing.

It had gone to his cardiologists and normal EKG, just a normal kind of... Yeah, yeah. Was playing golf two days later. Killed over. Just dropped dead. It's a way to do it, though. Yeah.

He had a shot. He was the last one that hit a shot. His four or five guys he was playing with it all hit. He hit, everybody turned and walked off, and they were all kind of about halfway down at fairway, and they're like, where's blank? And the, poor thing, he was gone. He was on the T-box.

He was gone. Well, doing what you care about. What the hell? Yeah. You know, it's a surprise to everybody. Oh, heck yeah. I had a friend I was talking to yesterday, and he said that he had a family member that all they ever wanted to do

was play golf at this one place. They played golf all over the place. It was like collecting stamps for some people. Sure, sure. They were collecting golfing, and the pinnacle of their place, that they wanted to play was this famous golf course. I don't know if it was a gust or where it was. So they played, sat down, they gave the person, you know, two fingers of whiskey, you know, to enjoy at the 19th hole and died right then.

Oh, good to sikes. So you know what? Not so bad. No, no. Colonel Bruce Hampton. He did that. Don't know who that is. He's kind of the godfather of a lot of the jam band.

scene out of the head I want to Tasey's favorite people then I love it when bands jam man that's awesome I guess

dude do do do dude dude do yeah I guess I get enough already I get to lose

another bell right but now he was playing they were playing a concert like New Year's Eve and he was with all of his the Tetsky Trucks

band and I think some of the guys from widespread Fred Panic, and they were all just jamming in this stage, and they got done, and he had a hard-taken dot on the stage. Wow. At the end of the show, at the very end of the show, just was gone.

Isn't it crazy? I wouldn't mind that. No, no. Except it was one of our shows. I'd be pissed. Oh, I'd be pissed. Because Scott tried to do a damn solo. I'd be like, hell, I've got to carry all this shit out of here by myself.

Yeah. I don't know how to unplug all this shit. Speaking of Scott, check out his website at simply Herbils.com. I need to make a purchase myself of some CBD nasal spray. I don't know. Use it every day. It's the best

stuff in the world. All right. Well, thank you, Tacey. Those are good. Tacey. Bill freak. You're bellho. All right. Now, up until recently... Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio.

Thank you, Ronnie B. What we've been doing is going back to 2014 and doing calls that we haven't done. And Tacey said, well, what about people that are calling in now? It's like we probably should do some of those. So I'm going to do these blind as well. I have not pre-screened these.

If we have to stop recording so I can look something up, we will. We'll try to do this whole school. All right? Hey, Dr. Steve. Hey, buddy. Love you. Love the show. Hey, thank you.

Thank you. Long time, but first time in a while. Hey, thanks, man. Nice to hear your wife on the line, too. Oh, that's nice. Perianal abscess or thrombosis. Let's talk about them. They're fucked up.

Yeah. Go to an urgent care and an RN doesn't know shit that's going on about them. No, no, no, no. That is true. So if he has a perianal abscess, that is a surgical emergency and needs to be, And particularly if it's an ischio rectal fossa abscess, which takes up just about your whole ass, your whole ass. And if you've got a hard, red, boiling hot, you know, abscess in your ass,

I'm not talking about like a zit. This is fluid filled. Those things can move because ass meat is juicy. and the pathways between the ass muscles there's a great way for bacteria to move around.

And I made the mistake once when I was very new. I had to get of trying to drain one of those in my office and then sending the guy to the hospital because he was in so much pain. Oh, wow. Okay.

I got just buckets of pus out but by the time he got to the hospital, he was septic and needed to have IV antibiotics and it delayed his surgery. So don't do that. Let a professional do it. But anyway, let's... Sitting on one for 1,200 miles driving. Oh, Jesus, too.

What the fuck? Do I need to go see a froctologist? Yes. They're the ones that know how to deal with us. I don't know. My local GP was booked out for about seven or eight days, so I get to see the R in the morning after I get home. I'm guessing this guy

is either an expatriate or lives in a place with socialized medicine just given the access. This shit's fucking awful. I had a bit of a... But even in socialized medicine countries, well, particularly there,

emergency care is excellent and it's free and you can get in. And this is an emergency if it's what I'm imagined. Hard push on a few days ago and it started from then. Yeah. I did my own WebMD research,

but I love to hear your thoughts on one. Okay, so the other thing that this could be then is rather than one of those big giant abscesses is he could have a smaller abscess that is caused by this giant stool that he passed that caused irritation or even a small tear in the rectal wall that is now infected and working its way to the outside and it'll eventually cause a peri-anal fistula. And now that's not a and necessarily a medical emergency, but a proctologist needs to fix that.

Certainly can be pretty uncomfortable, too. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my goodness. You ever dealt with those? Personally, yes. Not the complete fish, Sheila, but I have unfortunately had the opportunity to experience the abscesses

and the rectal fissures. Yeah. But thankfully not. Not the... Now, did you ever have the T-N-on? No, no. Okay, do you want to explain what that is? You know what it is, right?

When they run the wire through there and then pull it out the other side. Yeah. It's like a zip-tie. It's like a zip-tie. You can use zip-ties. I think they use the thing that's like a zip-tie. So what the surgeons wants to do

is if you have a mature fistula line coming out of your ass, you know, the ass meat, sure. There will be a connection to the inside in the rectum somewhere. So they want to take a wire and work it all the way

up there very gently without poking into the tissue you want to go through that track. Yeah, follow the tube. Follow the tube all the way into the rectum, pull it back out. Now you can use that wire to drag something like a twist tie

in there. And when we say twist tie, they've got surgical stuff. It's called a t-on. And you go in and then you tighten it up. And so you have this thing. Just imagine. It's kind of hard to imagine. Like you have a

twist tie. It's coming out of your anus, crossing over to where the hole is. Right. And then it dives into your ass, and you don't see it anymore, but it's going in to your ass and coming back out again inside your

rectum. And then that's where the loop is. Making a loop-ty-loop, yep. And what you do is you keep tightening it. Just a little at a time. A little bit in time. A little bit of time. Kind of braces. Yes, yes. Okay, there you go. I self-a-bath.

One to 75. So you tighten it a little bit at a time, and what it does is it drags that fistula track with it, and it will heal up behind it. And so the fistula gets closer and closer and closer to the rectum until it becomes one with the rectum, and then you pull the thing through, and then you've got to let it heal up. It's like having the worst rectal fissure in your imagine. imagination, but that will get rid of the fistula, and once it heals up, then you're good as gold. Otherwise, they're really hard to get rid of because they're infected. You can't just go in there and just cut the fistula tract out because it'll still be infected and you're just making a bigger one. So anyway, proctologists are awesome.

Find a proctologist that can take care of this. All right? Yep. Okay. Uh-oh. Oh. Dr. Steve. Yes.

Terry. That is. I'm going to guess that's Terry Boudreau. Let's see. I recognize the voice. Otherwise known as a bootmaster. Yeah, there you go. I get myself a bell.

I have a quick question. I was listening to one of your podcasts and you talked about Toreen. Terene. Terene. My biggest question is whether or not it would have any issue with either my tri-leptol that I take or my epilepsy. Please let me know. Thanks very much, and I hope you all have a lovely day. Peace out.

Oh, Tori. Tori, yeah. Tori. The supplement, yeah. Okay, because a Toreen is a loaf of force meat. Yeah. That's the definition of a Toreen. Aspect, it's like paté, you cook it in a covered pottery mold.

Gross. In a Ban Marie, in other words, a steam bath. And it makes, like, bologna. It's sort of like high flu. and bologna. You take a bunch of meat and spices and stuff and mush it up. You stick it in there with some gelatin, and then you heat it up. And then when it comes out, it's like a loaf and you can eat it.

And it's, I've, not for me, but anyway. So, taurine is what he's talking about. I tried taking taurine because it said, there was an article that said it may be the fountain of youth. And I'm always looking for anti-aging stuff. Helps with aging, right. So I took a thousand milligrams of torine and once, oh no, once, yeah. Oh, no.

And I thought I was going to crawl out of my skin. So it's the stuff that they put in energy drinks. I used to think, oh, well, this is, you know, they just put that in there. Everybody puts it in there. It doesn't really mean anything. We should get Richard and Chetai on the show because there are energy drink experts. Yeah. And the research on touring.

Now, I wouldn't mind trying maybe 250. milligrams of Torrine and then working my way up to a thousand but I went to see my shrink that day and I had taken the Torrine and back then I was still taking the Modafanel every day and I was

almost manic you know I was there's a thing called acethesia where people are you have sort of like body psychosis where they're just bouncing around the room that can't sit still and that's how I felt on that stuff

so now he's interested in taking the taurine, does it interact with his triliptol? And torrine is an amino acid, right? Yes. Yeah, well, I know it's a supplement that they've studied a lot for energy boosting and for brain. Well, I guess it's not an amino acid. It's a proteinogenic amino sulfonic acid. Take a bell away.

I'm taking a bell away from myself. But it occurs naturally in foods. protein and stuff like that. And we use taurine for movement in cells and things like that and energy production. So that's why they start putting it in there. But I'd have to look and see Taurine, drug interaction. There are a couple of programs online where you can put your drugs in and see if they're drug interaction with trileptily said, right? Yep.

So we'll just look it up and see. I'm putting it into one of those. systems right now and taking just a second and I'm okay here trileptal and torrine drug interactions phase four clinical study wow so drug interactions are reported among 21 people who take

trilateral and torrine common interactions include insomnia no shit oh and seizure among males okay so phase four clinical study analyzes what interactions people who take triletal and torrine have. I think that you've got to talk to your neurologist, you know, before you do this now. Torrine is in every energy drink out there almost. So if it was a big problem, you'd think that we would have heard about it already with trileptyl because lots of people

are on trilateral. But in a situation like this where we've got 21 cases, some of them were people having seizures, talk to your neurologist before you get on anything. You've got to be really careful if you've got a seizure disorder particularly about medicine over-the-counter stuff. Because people think well, if it's over-the-counter, it's totally safe. Not necessarily. Not so fast.

Yeah. All these drugs have interactions and they can have adverse effects and stuff like that. So, you know, if you are driving, the last thing you want is to have a seizure because in some states you lose your license for eight months, others in six months. for six months, but you're going to lose some freedom if you have a breakthrough seizure.

So, again, just talk to your neurologist. Okay, that's a good one. That's a great one. Terry, the bootmaster. The bootmaster. All right. Here's one for the podcast, if you will. This is what this says.

Hey, Dr. Steve. Here's one for the podcast, if you will. Yeah. So, okay, we all know why we have to sleep, you know, seven, eight, nine hours per night and how, you know, it helps your brain and your body just sort of detoxify and rest and all that. Yeah. Do we know why a 10 or 20 minute nap is so good? It's crazy.

Is there a scientific explanation? Because, you know, sometimes I take a 10 minute nap and I feel like a new person. Same. Like, say, one in the afternoon or something. So just wondering about that if we have any real evidence. Okay, thank you. No, there is evidence. that it's helped some people

but there's not evidences to why we don't know why we sleep we can characterize all these circadian cycles and we know melatonin's involved in there and we know certain circuits shut off and other ones stay on and you know

but we don't know why now I have narcolepsy and when I drive down the road sometimes my brain tries to kill me and says, let's just go to sleep now while you're going 70 miles down a mountain highway, totally fine. But if I pull over and then sleep, I will sleep really soundly and I'll wake up going, oh, shit, am I driving? And then, but then I feel like a million bucks. So, yeah, it's crazy.

There have been some studies that say that it can improve your memory and that you, You may be able to do some executive functioning better if you take a nap. However, there is a downside to napping during the day, particularly if they're prolonged naps. And that's that it might affect your ability to sleep that night. So older people particularly are probably going to sleep six to eight hours a day. If they sleep four of them during the afternoon, then they're only going to get four of them at night, most likely. If they're lucky. so you've got to be careful

set of time or folks the apocry of the thing was that what's his name Edison would hold a pen in his hand and then he would when he fell asleep he would drop the pen and it would wake him up

and then he'd go back to work so I'd do something like that I hold my cell phone in my hand or whatever particularly if I'm pulled over on the side of the road or yeah you can just set an alarm yeah I think alarm is a hell less safe for dropping your

You're... Tacey, you nap, right? Mm-hmm. Sometimes, yeah. How long do you nap for? Oh, I'm a long napper. Oh, are you? Yeah.

Yeah. I'm a 20-minute on the nose. I sit my timer. I'm out. Well, I got time. Wake right up. You know? Yeah.

Yeah, you are retired. Well, this thing here that I'm reading says nap as short as 10 minutes can be beneficial. I can attest to that. Oh, shoot you. Keep your nap to 30 minutes or less so you don't wake up feeling more tired. No. So you have this thing called sleep inertia. When you sleep for a long time, then you're just like, oh, God, I can't get up.

You know, you can feel groggy. And I always just imagine that's just whatever the sleep chemical is that's running around your brain, keeping you unconscious, is just taking it's sweet time washing out. Yeah, probably so. Anyway. All right. Is there anything better than like a Sunday afternoon nap on? I wouldn't know. Oh, God.

Honestly, I wouldn't know. I usually don't now. Your dogs pile on top of you and everybody just goes out. Everybody's out. Everybody's out. If I fall asleep in the parking lot, though, and then I wake up, I feel great. Oh, yeah, shoot you. You know, that's what you need to do.

No, I do every Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Well, as long as we get out of here on time. If not, I'd just take a nap in the middle of the show. Good for you. You guys wouldn't know. You wouldn't miss me. Hey, Steve, it's Mike from New York. Hey, Mike.

I hope you're doing well. Yeah, man. Understand from a few of your texts and tweets, actually, maybe trying some ketamine to help get yourself back in order. Correct. Give me an idea. I know you like double-blind placebos. My wife's been acting a little nutty.

So I had a friend, I gave him some ketamine, and I tell him, don't tell me when you're doing it, and don't tell her. We don't need to know, double blind. And so he drops it in her coffee now and again How long should this go on before I report the results As if it's working or not That's one part of that I appreciate Feel better

Okay, wait a minute So Where's Okay I got to call the Hello, is this the Syracuse Police Department I need to report a crime Stop it, Mike

Don't do that He's fucking He's just jive I hope so anyway Yeah I'm sure he is Surely to goodness Mike is just kidding us He's a Josher

I'll tell you that He likes to tell him some stories He surely does But I know I am taking ketamine prescribed by a physician for refractory depression and I can't

it's really indicated for people who have depression that is not relieved with other means or if people can't take the regular drugs so SNRIs SSRIs don't we talk about this already I know I talked about on Bedabler show we've not gone into it much okay well he talked about dumping buckets of serotonin people so

People know what I'm talking about, so I can't take the SSRIs, SNRIs, and I couldn't take bupropion either, which is Welbutrin, which is the one you usually put people on when they can't tolerate the other ones. And I'm not taking Xanax and stuff like that. I just don't need to be addicted to anything else. I was habituated to Lunesta, which is Ambien's younger brother or sister. and I was taking three milligrams a day of that religiously. I was sleeping good, but I knew I was habituated to it. If I skipped a dose, I didn't sleep at all. So I weaned myself off of that.

I went three and then two and then one and then a half and finally got myself off of it. So I'm just doing it all natural now. But anyway, so, yeah, the ketamine is really something. I'm doing the ultra-low dose. I'm not, I don't want to be tripping balls. You know, that's not my goal. But if they had psilocybin, I would do that instead because I think the data is just as good, if not better, for PTSD particularly, and that's a little bit of my problem.

But psilocybin, thanks to Timothy Leary, that's people get tired hearing me complain about it, but the popularization of psychedelics in the 60s cut all the research off for. at least about 40 years. Nobody could get any funding. No. You know, because all they had in their head, because even the Democrats, Republicans, both were socially very conservative during the 60s, and then you have these quote-unquote dirty hippies tripping balls, man.

Going around spreading love and kindness. Oh, yeah, God, don't spread love and kindness. Don't do that. Because they'll come after you for that one. Then you've got to be tripping if you're doing those kind of things. But anyway, people saw that, and they're like, well, we're not funding that shit. Hell no. Right.

But it's coming back. Cilocybin is running behind ketamine, but ketamine's got some good data. Cilocybin's got great data. And as I talked about on BDabler's show today, psilocybin actually could be FDA approved, unlike marijuana. So marijuana can't be FDA approved because it's a plant. And it's, you know, their rule is it's got to be a single drug. or if it's more than one, it's got to be a fixed percentage or fixed ratio,

and it has to be consistent plus or minus a certain number of percent from pill to pill. Now, you can't do that with a plant or even a gummy bear that you've extracted from a plant. So the only THC that the federal government can approve is in a synthesized form called Drinabinol, which is Delta 9 THC in pill form. It's sold as maranol, and we use it for chemo-associated. nausea and vomiting, and we can use it for people who have lost their appetite and stuff like that, too, because now it's generic. Insurance will pay for it.

They wouldn't be for. But that's it for marijuana. You could pick out any of the other molecules, CBD. You can do it with that, as long as it's cannabodial. It's 100% cannabodial at a fixed milligram amount. Then the FDA can approve it. So we use CBD for Drevei syndrome, which is a refractory seizures in children. Now, but marijuana itself you can't do.

Cilocybin, you can do because you go, well, mushrooms are a plant. Yes, but the active ingredient, there is muscarine in there and some other anticholinergic shit that we don't really care about. but the psilocybin is a single molecule that is synthesized readily synthesizable in the lab that they could put in a pill and say here's 2.5 micrograms or 2.5 milligrams or whatever the doses

do the studies. They can sell it and if they change one little molecule they can patent it and then they can make money. Yeah, and then make money off of it which that's fine with me If someone will just effing do it, you know, if they need to be incentivized by money, which is what makes the world go around, don't you know? Oh, yeah.

Then, yeah, then let them go for it. But we're just now finally shedding ourselves of that imagery from the 60s. And it's, you know, mainly because all the legislators from that time are all dead now. So most of us that did it back then are dead. I remember copping pot from a friend of mine in an alleyway behind this place where we could buy cigarettes and he had Panama Red, which that's what they called it. It was just marijuana. The Red here's kind of Redish.

It wasn't Cincinnati back then. It was just sticks and leaves and seeds and stuff. And it was a nickel bag was five dollars. And the lid, they called a lid, which turns out to be about an ounce, was just what you could jam into a film canister lid. That's why they called it a lid. Anyway, so you had a nickel bag, a dime bag, and a lid. And so I bought a nickel bag because I had $5.

And I remember telling this friend of mine, I was so nervous, I shoved the little baggy into my underpants, and I went, I don't know you, dude. And what is like, no, I do know you. I will see you tomorrow in class. So I'm really glad that things have changed so that, number one, the quality control is so much better. And that we're very close to getting a federal law that's going to legalize it. Did you hear that they just finally did a federal banking law that will allow dispensaries to use the banking system,

even though a lot of places they are using it anyway? But now people will be able to just use their credit card or their debit card. to pay and they finally came to their senses on that. That's, of course, getting the money flowing correctly was the number one thing that they had to do before they're going to actually legalize it because they want to make sure they get their cut because doing it this way, they can keep track of it. When it's a cash business, it's a lot harder. So now they can make sure they get their taxes and all that stuff, which is fine.

tax it just make it legal tax it like alcohol and get it out of the hands of the black market so that people aren't tempted to put buprenorphin in their pot that they're selling on the street because then it makes you more sleepy because they have pot in the dispensary that makes you sleepy I mean that's why that's happening yeah so that's when I'm in favor of that so I'm in favor of legalization you should be able to grow your own too yes you should be able to be able to And then, you know, what you got. It's like growing your own tomatoes or basil in your backyard. That's right.

It's just like it. Right on, brother. I get kind of a high making fermented hot sauce. Not an actual high, but, you know, I get a pleasure center release just from doing it. You know, fermenting it and processing it and making it into something that people enjoy. And so I love it. And, oh, by the way, bump. Nobody cares.

about this home. Can you please stop bullshitting? But bumper crop of Tabasco Peppers this year. Ooh. All right.

Ok-doke. All right. Let's see here. Okay. I'm not playing that one. Let's see. Good God. Are we still back in 24K?

I'm in 2015. I'm glad I never saw this one. This one is, I can't play it. Oh, goodness. It's vile. Okay. Yeah, I'll do it. All right, let's try this one.

Keep you clean. is one from June 14, 2015. I'm so sorry. Hey, Dr. Steve. I think I'm dying. I'm not sure. Oh, God. Oh, no. There we go. Oh, no. If you think you're dying, don't call here. Don't call this. In 2015. We'll be the judge. I keep on me in the damn headaches. Very rarely

in the front. Most of the time, they're in the back of my head, right at the bottom of my skull in that damn soft spot where your spine beats your skull, whatever the hell that's called back there. Yeah. I don't have a brain aneurism or a tumor or something like that. No. That doesn't sound like it. I'm trying to look it up.

I can't find nothing. Well, it was 2015, and we didn't even have Google that. So you want to talk about these kinds of headaches? As you'll say, a lot of times what you'll get is... Oh, this guy's still alive. Hey. Oh, no. Wait.

Oh, I can't confirm that. I got a bunch of text messages from him about vaping, but that was February of 2015. So I'm going to confirm. We can't confirm. I'm going to text it real quick. Well, real... You talk. Real quick, when you start talking about headaches.

Of course, new onset headaches are always a concern, have them worked up. But in, you know, most cases, we can narrow them down to a few things. And what he's describing to me sounds a lot like a tension headache. Sure does. He's getting some... Give myself a bell. That's what I was thinking to. Yeah, you know, and what he's talking about, the soft spot in the back is it's the occipital Atlas Ridge.

I'm not giving you another bell Well, yeah, it's for the skull and the spinal cord attach And there are a whole lot of really tight muscles And tendons and ligaments and stuff in there And it's to stabilize your head So your head is not flopping around all the time Okay, he did text me just update A month after this about vape pens and stuff

So let's Let's hope it was a tension addict And tensionetics can be resolved without medication with proper therapy. Correct. Sometimes it's acupuncture, sometimes physical therapy. Sometimes it's touch therapy, massage therapy, you know, craniosacral therapies, osteopathic, manipulations, chiropractic, et cetera.

So these things, a lot of times, do not need to be treated medically with a pill. Yeah. There's a lot of intervention for those. So I hope you're okay. Yeah, we hope so. Anyway. If not, yeah, send us a. That makes a different

Okay, here's one from June No, that was too long We don't have enough time Let me see Let's try this one Okay This is from June 15, 2015 Hey, Dr. Steve, my name's Jason

I spend 20 years in the military And acquired a hydro seal On my testicle Okay, thank you for your service, by the way While I was in And just concerned My question is Does this further along or does this actually cause testicular cancer or can it cause testicular cancer?

Good. Excellent question. So a hydroceal is a collection of fluid inside the scrotum. And if you take, we talked about this on the very first show, if you take a penlight, put it behind your scrotum. It will light up if it's a hydrosil with clear fluid and it will light up like E.T's finger. Those things are benign. Some urologists just leave them. Others, if it's really bothering, you can have it removed. It's not a big deal.

But to my knowledge, there's no association between hydroceals and cancer of any kind. So I hope that sets your mind at ease eight years later. Okay, very good. So before we get out of here, Scott, you had one from the fluid family, which, by the way, you can join. follow my Twitter at Weird Medicine and usually Saturdays at 1 o'clock or thereabouts we record

and you can just hang out with us in the YouTube channel YouTube.com slash at Weird Medicine Anyway, what do you got? Well, this is from nonchalant dawn and he's wanting to know if it's normal to not sneeze when you've been on Suboxone.

So evidently he's been on Suboxone for two years and hasn't sneezed in two years. Okay, so Suboxone is buprenorphine. And it's a medication of the medication of choice for getting people off-street opioids and maintaining them. Right. So that you can go to work and you just go to your Suboxone clinic once a month or whatever and pick up your supply. Once a week. And do your thing.

Well, it depends. It depends on where you are. Oh, that's true. And then you can stay on it forever or you can wean yourself off of that very slowly over time. Oh, yeah. So I advocate that when possible. Go to complete sobriety, but I understand that's not everybody's philosophy and not everybody can do it or wants to do it.

So, but sneezing. Now, all these things are antitussive in that they will decrease coughing. And suppress histimic response. Possibly. That would keep you from sneezing. Yes, that's right. Yeah, I would say. So that may be if it's somehow stabilizing.

the mast cells that release histamine. Yeah. But I'm, that's interesting. I'm not, let me, do you have any information in front of you on buprenorphine being antihistamineic? No, but I can look it up. That was just my guess, yeah.

It wouldn't make sense. I agree. Suboxone is, yes, Suboxone can be notoriously challenging to wean off of too. Yes, but you can go as slow as you want to at that point. Right. I know some people take one quarter of a pill, and that keeps them comfortable.

And some of that, you get to the point where it's a placebo. Incredible. Is buprenorphine, well, you know, we could ask Echo, while you're looking it up. Echo, is buprenorphine anti-histominic? According to First Databank, antihistamine and buprenorphine are different drugs. Antihistamine is a brand name for diphenhydramine HCL and buprenorphine is a generic drug. Okay, echo stop. Shut off.

God. Not even helpful in any way. Amazon has really got to get a large language model working with Alexa. I know they're worried that she's going to say something. that they don't want her to say but you know that's just not even useful so I'm just looking right here on on one particular one sheet that is dealing with buprenorphine and if I can get the stupid thing I can't find anything Steve okay okay here we go it just says before prescribing it yeah don't use it with antihistamines because it can cause

increased drowsiness We knew that So I have no idea Yeah We'll have to get back Maybe he's just taking better care of himself And he's not using street drugs

And he's not snorting things Maybe that's why he's not sneezing Drugs.com They've got a little thread here With three answers And people are talking about They have had not sneezed While they were on Suboxin

As soon as they started him off As soon as he started coming off the box, then starts to stay. So what do they, did anybody give a hypothesis? No, no. Okay, I'm asking the AI. Oh, I'm sorry, yeah. We'll look up.

We'll look it up. It says here, sneezing is a side effect of buprenorphin, so I don't know. Yeah, that's very interesting. Maybe just a weirdo. Yeah, but I could, now the bells are starting to, the alarms are going off.

The wheels are starting to turn in my head, trying to think of a novel, way to treat perennial rhinitis with a buprenorphine. All right. All right. Okay, do, well, you got anything else? Nope, I'll do her. All right, well, thanks, everyone.

We really appreciate your support. Thank you. Check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. And listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk channel. Best way to do it is on demand. If you have SiriusXM, you have an online account. just listen to it on demand. It really helps, even if you just play it

and have it in the background, that really helps. Many thanks to our listeners, though, whose voicemail on topic ideas make this job very easy. Thanks for hanging out with us. Fluid family in the waiting room on YouTube. Go to our website at Dr.steve.com for schedules, podcasts, and other crap.

Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps, quit smoke and get off your asses. Get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition and weird medicine, thanks. Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye. Goodbye.