Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 574 - Real if You Can Lick 'Em

Episode Date: January 20, 2024

Dr Steve, Dr Scott, PA Lydia and Tacie discuss: PA Lydia and breast augmentation ASIA syndrome knife swallowing mishaps duck larynges aren't good to eat tapeworms yay pinworms yay the human dragon temporary breast augmentation? accutane for acne what the hell is a scab anyway poison ivy stinks 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

You see, you see, you see, you're stupid minds. Stupid, stupid. Man, you are one pathetic loser. You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir. 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 to bolivide stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbells, exacerbating my incredible 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.

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 aging Dr. Steve. It's Weird Medicine from the world-famous Cardiff Electric Network Studios in beautiful downtown Bedabler City, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio. Now a podcast.

I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal, Dr. Scott. Traditional Chinese medicine provider, it 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. Back from sabbatical, it is P.A. Lydia, everyone.

Hello. That was some sabbatical. We'll talk about that in a minute. 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. 7664323. That's 347. Pooh-Hid.

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 the show without talking over with your health care provider. Very good. Okay. Please don't forget stuff.

com. Stuff. Dr.steve.com is the holiday season emerges. It really helps a lot to just use that link to go to Amazon. So stuff. Dot Dr. Steve.com And you can get your favorite guitar player, a Rodey robotic tuner or the new Rody Coach, which is a device that teaches someone how to actually play their instrument.

So you can go to Rody, R-O-A-D-I-E dot-D-I-E dottersteve.com or just go to stuff. Dottersteve.com and scroll down and it'll be right there. Good stocking stuffers are tweakeda audio.com. Use offer code fluid for 33% off your order. We don't know if we get anything from that anymore, but the link still works and the code still works, so that's more important to me. And check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net.

That's simplyerbils.net. And Tacey and I do a show, and we're doing some live streams, and we're doing some different things. And I also posted some behind the scenes stuff from my trip to Dallas doing the normal world Halloween special that was loads of fun

so the link to the special is there but also sort of some things that have you know explaining how we did it and those kinds of things so check that out at patreon.com slash weird medicine and also I'm still doing cameos for next to nothing

check that out at cameo.com slash weird medicine I did a bunch of them while I was in Dallas while we were filming normal world and that was kind of fun And so Donna P. got a whole bunch of those. And she helped us get to our goal of being gold on cameo. I still don't know what that is.

You had to do 50 of them. And one time I was, I had done like 12 in a day, and I was one below Darcy De Silva. Tacey knows who that is. How exciting was that. Of course, she probably charged, you know, 250 for hers, and I was charging $2, but as far as the number of cameos being done, I was one less than her.

This is kind of funny. I wonder if she looked down there, oh, who's this? Who's that? Yes, who's that? Darcy. Anyway, all right. All right. Well, I guess we should probably talk about the elephant in the room.

P.A. Lydia hasn't been here for quite some time. And the elephant in the room is the fact that you actually had your procedure that we've been talking about in here for years. So tell us about that. I don't want to be the one to break the news, not my news to break. Thank you. It's such an honor to break this. Yeah.

Well, do not want to. No, no, I do, do. Yeah, totally. Do do. I noticed. I hoped no one would pick up on that. Yeah, so we several months ago did a couple of specials on boob jobs, right? And we had several women call in who had had the procedure done, all different aspects.

And it was extremely helpful to me. So I ended up deciding to go forward with a boob job. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And?

And three weeks, three, three and a half weeks postdoc. Yeah? Yeah, everything's good. Yay. Better by the day. Excellent. No more pain. Please tell me you went for 42 triple Gs.

I didn't. I actually didn't know what I was getting. Oh, my goodness. I described what I wanted, and you guys in the studio can see. So I said I don't want to show up at work and be poking people in the face. No. But I want to know that I have some breasts. So he did some measurements, and he recommended 369 cc.

Which, yeah, it doesn't tell you very much, right? Yeah, and I was like, well, what cup size? He says it doesn't work that way. You'll find? He's like, just trust me. I know what you're describing. Something modest. Yeah.

So it ends up, I think I'm like a full C. I haven't even measured yet. I'm still in the zipper bras. You still swollen a little bit. Oh, is that right? I'm not swollen, and just wear, like, little sports bras with a zipper. Yeah. And no padding.

Was it painful? It, I used narcotics for the first 48 hours, sporadically. I took. inseds so cellicoxib yeah or twice a day for a week and then

non-stroyal antin inflammatory yeah she likes to throw the jargon around so at least I didn't use the brand name fancet

correct and so I yeah inseds celibrex for this show you can use brand names because our patients

are more used to yeah so some cellabrex and then ultimately switch over to Advil Talanol the biggest thing that I noticed

that was most difficult was A having a three-year-old who's used to being all over me. And she was a bit dramatic because I couldn't pick her up for the first two weeks. Oh, yeah. So she would randomly stalk me in the breast. And I was constantly worried about getting a hematoma and having to go in and evacuated it. Really? So she attributed you not picking her up to you having a boob job.

Well, she went with me. She's like, stupid boobs. I mean, I need a ride. I'm a single mom, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my mother and my daughter took me to my wife. I thought you're going to say she drove you home. After the procedure. She did.

Well, not the three. She had a booster seat. She was next to me. She was next to me. And I had my little, they sent me home. So I drove about six hours to get it done. And they were a bit annoyed that I was just going to get back in the car and go home six hours immediately after the procedure. I'm like, I got to do what you got to do.

I got to do stuff. So they gave me some SCD, some compression, battery powered compression stockings for my legs. Okay. And I wore them all the way home. That helps prevent blood clots. after surgery so very good and some spasms and it ended up needing some flexoril

for a couple days but yeah now I'm just massaging them trying to keep them down and jiggly need any help with that I'm sure Dr. Scott would be happy to help out I was thinking like a Craigslist ad college kids

small fee yeah come massage my breasts practice they can practice right well you get a bell myself a bell. Thank you. Matter of fact, it doesn't matter how many bells they get today. Today you win the bells.

You get as many bells as you want for getting a boob job because our listeners encouraged you to do it. I mean, listen, I would not have done it just because of the listeners. But they were very helpful. Yeah, good. Well, thank you listeners. Thank you, very good. Yeah, it is funny that I guess we're all going to, for some sort of mean because

people have breast reductions and then you have people that are going well wait a minute i would like to have larger breasts so you know we're always never i guess happy with what we have i don't know what it is or we're going for some median you know there's some yeah you're probably always a bit dissatisfied with what you have right minus a is not enough but um yeah 42 triple g is probably too much bit much for a breast reduction you could be trying to to avoid back pain. Correct. To me, you know, to that, I say just work out at the gym a little bit more.

Or lean back a little bit, so your center gravity goes back and... It's simple physics. It definitely works that way. It does not work. Definitely works that way. Yeah, there's not a boob workout you can do that decreases the size of your breasts. I bet you can lean backwards, though. I'm going to invent one because I think there is.

I think there are exercises you could do to, if that's your only reason. It's funny, the physician that I used for it, my friend who also used him, she actually went to him to have her implants removed. Really? And I'm like, oh, I'll go and have, but she said, I'd do it again because she thought she was having some systemic inflammatory symptoms, generally feeling bad. Perhaps she thought because of her implants. It's called Asia Syndrome, and lots of people think that they have that. But I think I, well, let me put it this way, I've heard of a case that was absolutely legit where the person had undifferentiated rheumologic disorder.

And the thing is, is that when they went to get their implants removed, the surgeon wouldn't do it. They said, if I take them out, I'm not putting anything else back in. So this person was like, well, okay. then I'm just leaving them in. Huh. That's a little stinker. Yeah, so it's called autoimmune syndrome from a immune, A-S-I-A. I can't have got a look.

Immune antigen or something like that. Asia syndrome. Look it up, Dr. Scott. Thank you. All right. But, yeah, so that's a, that, you know, for a while there, they stopped using. using silicone implants because of that. And then the data came out and said, you know, it's really, if it happens at all, it's

vanishingly rare, but the odds aren't zero. Well, it's anti-inflammatory immune syndrome induced by adjuvants. Adjuvants. But, you know, Dr. Stephen, well, we all, and Lydia and Tastes, we all know, we've all seen them people that have implants, you can be allergic to anything and have rea. reactions to anything. Right. Even titanium, which was crazy. I didn't believe that one. You know, you have a plate in your arm and you can actually have an allergy. I had it, well, let's say, I saw a red one time where a gal had an ACDF, you know, so it's an anterior cervical

fusion, disfusion, and was allergic to the implants. Really? Yeah, the metal, so they had to go and take it all out. Oh, my goodness. Yes, that's two neck surgeries. Yikes. Oh, no. Difficult to prove. I mean, was she having, like, local. Oh, yeah, it's very, yeah, fresh swelling, very histimic response right is awful. She's having trouble swallowing or coughing. It's awful.

Yeah, the Asia syndrome causes a you know, it's systemic. It hurts everywhere except where the implants are. Yeah. And that's why so many people were saying, you know, poo-pooing it, saying that

it's not a real thing. But And it can be, it can result from exposure to other things other than silicone implants. And, you know, it's very, it is very difficult to diagnose. There are aluminum-based adjuvants that are used in some vaccines that people can get this from. And some other things, such of that nature. They'll get myalges, in other words, muscle pains, arthritis, or arthralges, which are joint pains, chronic fatigue, usually, you know, neurologic weakness caused by actual demyelination. And so Asia syndrome itself is not that controversy.

It was just controversial whether silicone implants could cause it. Gotcha. So anyway. All right. Well, we're, so did you get saline or silicone? Yeah. Yeah, I got the, they call them gummies or gummy bears. Oh, really?

Yeah. They feel like gummy bears that way. It's supposed to be more natural. They have cherry flavor. They don't have any flavor. And they are smooth and round as opposed to tear drop because the teardrops were the ones with the rough texture that were more linked to lymphoma. Is that right? Yeah.

And they were rough texture to keep them in place. Right. And this doesn't matter if it's been. around in there who cares yeah interesting which has happened once yeah is that right how do you know I felt it wow someone rolled over on me and I felt I felt it you felt it just go boop yeah it went bloop exactly like did it hurt it did not hurt can you make it but I was so shocked that I felt like it should hurt yeah you know but it didn't hurt so it was fine well can you make it do it or no I'm not going to try that yeah yeah okay okay okay maybe for a party trick

though, later. I don't think so. Have you, if you put a light, like a bright light, does it let your boob light up like E.T.'s finger? I'll try it tonight. Okay. That would be a Halloween trick. That would be Halloween costume.

You come to the door. Exactly. Lit up. Oh, my God. Poor Lydia. She's going to second guess. You can try it now if you want. I've got a flashlight.

It's okay. Okay. All right. Well, you're not one of those that goes, oh, you want to see? because we've had friends that were like, we're just showing everybody. It's like, why are you? Nobody's seen them except for my girlfriend.

Yeah, good. I mean, you know, female friend, Ashley. Yeah. She liked them. Good. Well, maybe she should be your real girlfriend now. Maybe so. Her husband was a little jealous that I was showing her my boobs.

Well, good. Well, congratulations. Thanks, glad everything went okay. Thank you. Thanks for your role in it. Thank you to the listeners who gave great. The peer pressure, the peer pressure. The positives and the negatives.

Correct. All equally weighed. I love it. Excellent. Well, all right. Well, something that we've instituted since you were here last, which means it's been a long time is Tacey's Time of Topics. I don't think we had that. At least we didn't have, she didn't have themes music.

So let's hit it. Let's do it. 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. which is copyrighted by Harrison Young and Area 58 public access and now here's Tacey well hello everyone I just want to give credit to Steve for giving me these topics because I had to work 13 hours this week and it was entirely too difficult to find tossings of my own so you get nothing that's right so let me put my glasses

on now's the time to go potty if you need to the man who swallowed all the knives aboard the ship in eighteen o eight an american sailor was admitted to guys hospital in london complaining of persistent abdominal pain doctors could not understand the cause of his illness and refused to believe his explanation that he had swallowed dozens of knives a few months later he died and doctors discovered that the sailor had been telling the truth inside his stomach and intestines were the corroded remains of more than 30 knives. Swallowed as part of a horribly misguided party trick. What? He did it as a trick? Oh, my word. In one occasion, he swallowed as many as... There's a magic trick where you can do that,

where it looks like you're swallowing a knife. You're not supposed to actually do it. No, he did it, but he swallowed as many as 14 in a single session. Oh. Tumass. This one is disgusting. Speak ill of the dead, but that's just stupid. Yeah, the next one is also disgusting.

story number two A boy who honked like a goose In 1848 The German surgeon Carl August Von Burrow was summoned To treat one of the strangest cases Of his or anybody else's career A boy from a nearby village

Was struggling to breathe And every time he excelled he honked like a goose They learned that the local children Like to blow through the throat of a recently killed goose To imitate the bird's cry His young patient had been playing this unconventional game when he was overcome by a coughing fit and inhaled the goose's larynx. What?

The surgeon performed a tracheotomy and managed to remove the goose's throat from inside the boys. The patient made a good recovery. So this sounds just like Jurassic Park 3. Didn't they hold up a raptor voice box? and try to communicate with the raptors that we're all going to kill them. And then she goes, floop, floop through this thing. And they all stop. I didn't see that.

Which is ridiculous. Yeah, I'm not sure. But anyway, here. Yeah, they had that kid on TV not too, too long ago. And, of course, there he is. Hey, Billy. How are you today? Anyway, stupid

That's funny All right, anyway Topic number three, the tapeworm trap One of the more unusual medical devices Ever sold was patented in 1854 By an American doctor He described his invention as a trap for tapeworm It consisted of a hollow gold tube

baited with a piece of cheese attached to a length of string Come on. The patient was supposed to swallow this apparatus and then wait for a hungry tapeworm to seize the cheese. At this point, Dr. Myers said, by a gentle pulling at the cord of the trap and worm will, with ease, and perfect safety, be withdrawn. The inventor claimed implausibly that he had used it to catch a monster tapeworm more than 50 feet long. Get that, okay. It's not a gerbil.

Yeah, yeah. It was both ridiculous and useless and within a couple. a couple of years was no more than a historical curiosity. Okay, I could see someone falling for it, but why, I mean, it's pretty demonstrably worthless as soon as they go to withdraw the thing and there's no taper. But I guess he just said, well, I guess you don't really have a tapeworm. I guess I was thinking they would at least go through the other end, you know. Well, if it went all the way through, then you would have, I mean, it'd have to be a really

long string and it would be a problem. Yeah. Don't you pull tapeworms out through the... Well, they do, but he wasn't. He was the wrong side. He was fishing for tape arms. Wrong hole, buddy. Right.

Yeah, definitely wrong. Because it'd be kind of hard to get it back up through the saw a deal, you know. When was that? 1854. Okay, well, I guess they can be excused for not understanding. If he would have just... It would have been a lot better if he had just gave, you know,

put a couple little small things of without the string and just let the worms crawl in and eat the cheese and poop them out. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I'm going to poison. It's like a little trap. You don't like a little trap. We just poop out the traps. I think he probably thought it would work, but that's some dumb ass shit.

That's hard to it. What are the best ways to remove tapeworms right now? Poison. You just kill them with poison. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if it's amendsol or what we use for it, but I guess if it's big enough if you You could probably

lasso it and ease it out. Yeah, anti-helmintic drugs. So these are helmints, you know, they're worms. So Prezacquantel is biltricide. Abendazol is albenza and nitazoxinide is alina. So, health care providers usually recommend

Prezacquantel because it also paralyzes the worm, forcing it to dislodge from intestinal wall. But those drugs work really well, the anti-helmintic drugs. You know, they kill pinworms and all kinds of different worms inside your body. If you want to see a really horrific thing, you could Google rectal ascarus, A-S-C-A-R-I-S. Those are round worms. And when you kill those, you poop them all out at once.

And it looks like a big giant plate of spaghetti coming out of your rear end. It's delightful. But it was an awful thing to see it. Yeah, it's not good. Oh, good. That was the cover of my band's, you know, a CD. Well, we didn't have a CD. We had cassettes back then.

And there was a picture of that, these things coming out, and the name of our band was an ass maggot. There you go. I had worms one time, and I was a kid. Really? I had pinworms. Yeah, what kid didn't. So we should talk about how you diagnose pinworms.

Kids are walking around, they're scratching their crack constantly, right? Yeah. And then they come out at night. So you wait until the kids asleep, and you take this little paddle that's got double-sided tape on it, and you mush it all around their ass crack, and then you look at it under the microscope. And if you see pinworms in there, then you give the kid one dose of anti-helmintic medication, and they're done with it. Is it necessary to know if the kids,

It's got pinworms before you just proactively treat them. I'm kind of with you, but you don't want to just treat an itchy ass with a drug like that. You know. I mean, there are downsides, too. But it looks here, I'm just looking here. It says you can buy this stuff over the counter at Walgreens now. I didn't know that. Let's see here.

So maybe not taste. Pyran tell. Let me see what the, oh, come on. Parantel pamoate, and you give it to kids, single-dose effectiveness includes a measuring cup. It's, oh, it's banana-flavored. It must be common enough still. Yeah.

Yeah. Mabendazole is one of the more commonly prescribed versions. I had no idea you could just buy that stuff over the counter. That is kind of crazy, isn't it? Yeah. Worms are nasty Yeah Pretty much all worms

Coming out of your colon Are going to be nasty Uh-oh There's Beck, let's put him on Oh, Beck, he wants money $5 says he wants money He just gave him some Mr. Beck, you're on weird medicine

Where everyone? Oh, that's where Okay You want to come up? Not necessarily. Okay, very good. Thank you. Damn. I just lost five bucks. I have one more little story This one is called

The Human Dragon An 1889 A 24-year-old factory worker from Manchester woke up earlier than usual and struck a match in order to look at the clock next to his bed When he tried to blow out the flame There was a sudden explosion like a pistol shot

His breath had ignited so violently That his face was burnt And his mustache caught fire Yikes After several such incidents He was forced to give up smoking and did his best to avoid naked flames. His doctor had the bright idea of passing a tube into the man's stomach in order to analyze

what he found in it. He discovered that an obstruction in the patient's bowel was causing his stomach contents to ferment, producing large quantities of flammable methane. Having identified the cause, the doctor successfully used trial and error to find a drug that prevented the patient from breathing fire like a dyspeptic dragon. So what was he eating? It doesn't say what he was eating. I want to do that. What would you possibly eat that would ferment in your stomach to make methane?

And how could you have an intestinal obstruction for so long? Yeah. Yeah, without pain. Well, it had to be a partial obstruction. That's weird. Well, maybe we'll be doing a recall on this like we did on the. Well, but you know, what is it? We've talked about the disease.

makes you is like, what was it? It was like working out for 20 minutes. 30, 30 minutes. Really? I still think that was a pretty solid study. Yeah, except that it was completely debunked. Were you, you weren't here the, were you here the day that we debunked it? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, still, I think debunking was. We just wanted it to be true. Did you look at boobs on a computer or did someone stand here topless? No, no, no. No, no. It was a report. It was supposedly a medical study.

Bermanet. And it had been brought out there multiple times and debunked multiple times but it got picked up again by some news service and we ran it and I knew when we were talking about it. I think there's something funny about this

but normally I'll look things up while Tacey's talking about them right and then look at the real study. On that one I didn't do it. I was just mesmerized because I guess I wanted it to be true. I'm saying it, dude, had a form of auto brewery syndrome. Yes, I'll give you a bell for that.

Give myself a bell. Could be legit. But, yeah, I think that's true. Auto brewery syndrome is often where people get drunk because they're fermenting sugars in their intestine. And I've seen cases where people will piss do a urine drug test never had a drink in their life

and they'll show up with small amounts of alcohol in their urine because they've got a yeast infection and it's producing or yeast cystitis is producing alcohol in their bladder. Yeah, so auto brewery syndrome is a real thing where people produce alcohol.

They don't produce that the bacteria, the yeast and bacteria in their colon do. So, yeah. So there is a chance. There's a chance. You're saying there's a thing. Well, sure. I mean, these bacteria, they excrete hydrogen sulfide, methane.

I mean, you've seen people light farts before. Oh, yeah. That's, I mean, what boy hasn't done that with his friends. But, and that's real. It's flammable. The question is, how would you do it from above? And yeah, it's got to be the bowel obstruction, but he should be dead. Mm-hmm. Well, like partial bowel obstruction, I think.

Right. Anyway. Yeah, I'm kind of calling bullshit on that one, too, but I would like to know more about it. Well, thank you, Tase. You're welcome. Thank you, Steve. Thank you. Go on.

Oh, no. Give myself a bell. There you go. All right. You guys want to answer some medical questions? Sure. We should probably address the fluid family. So if you listen to us, record live.

and it's usually Saturdays at 1 p.m. Eastern. We do have a YouTube channel, and we just broadcast live. And it's YouTube.com slash at Weird Medicine, or you can follow us at Weird Medicine on Twitter, and you'll see the announcement. But, yeah, we had D-Ban, gifted five Dr. Steve memberships, and then Radish Diff, not to be undone, gifted 10, and then gifted another five. So thank you all. And if you come in there,

make sure you have it turned on so that you can accept gifted memberships. What do the members do right now? Well, now we're going to have to think of something. Because we have more members than we did. We have key chains, don't we? Well, yeah, okay, maybe we could send some things out or we could do a special show just for them, you know, question and answer for them. Sure, of course. AMA or something like that just for members. But anyway, I just thought that was kind of cool. So thank you all for doing that.

All right. Number one thing, don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. Okay. So this is apropos to PA Lydia. Hi, Dr. Steve. Hello. I'm tired of weenie questions. Okay, fair.

So here's a girl question. All right. Have you ever heard of a temporary breast augmentation? I think they just stick a needle in you and inject something. Yep. Let me know. Yeah, have you guys ever heard of this? I only, just in my research, saw the fat transfer where they collect some fat from a different part of your body, usually your back.

Yeah. And then they inject it into the breasts, where they process it and then inject into the breast. But I haven't heard of, like, a very temporary. Yeah, the temporary ones are done with saline. Well, what about for stretching, like, certainly after mastectomies? No, what this is actually for is like someone's doing a photo shoot and they want to go up a cup size or something. Okay, okay, got you. A properly trained plastic surgeon can take a needle and can inject saline, and you can get about a cup size increase and it'll lift and all that stuff.

It starts to go away immediately, so you have to go right there maybe 24, 48 hours, and it costs out the ass. It does not sound worth it. How much, just out of curiosity, how much was your, from start to finish, did your breast augmentation cost? 9,600. Okay, so doing it with the injection is like $3,000. So you do that three times, you might as well just get a permanent one. That's ridiculous. Yeah.

I never heard Taylor-Sitch. Yep, I never heard Taylor-Such, but. I do not think it'd be worth it. I think it's not comfortable. It couldn't feel good. Highfalutin models and stuff. Well, you know, the inside of the breast really doesn't have a lot of pain fibers. Yeah, but the stretch fibers in the skin.

The stretch does, yeah. And they said if you do it too often, what will happen is you'll end up with increased sagginess. Yeah. Because you're stretching out the skin when you shouldn't be. It's not ready to be stretched out. Oh, I know. Yep. Crazy.

But, yep, that's a real thing. Thank you. Let's see here. Hi, Dr. Steve. Hi, this is Blair. I have a son who's 12 has very bad acne. Doctor went through antibiotics, creams, everything. They're telling us that acutane is our only option.

There's so many risks for acutane, so it's very scary to have to use it. One of my options, Ed, how do you feel about acutate? Thank you. Yeah, I was nervous about acutane as well. one of our kids needed it and so Tacey and I looked at the risk but if it's alternatives I've prescribed

it before and what it is is acutane is isotretinoin it's 13 cis retinoic acid and what it is it's a vitamin A analog and if you remember vitamin A, D, E, and K are all fat soluble so you can overdose on those

and overdosing on vitamin A sucks. And what happens is you take this stuff and it permanently changes your skin. But you can also get dry lips. You can get to increase susceptibility to sunburn. You can get muscle aches and pains, headaches, etc., etc. Women of childbearing age

cannot take this stuff without being on absolute birth control because it's known to induce birth effects. So it is insanely great. If you've got severe cystic acne, Tacey, you want to talk about a little bit about it? I mean, poor Liam was, his back was just terrible. And what's up? Yeah.

No. What? I was talking to him, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, his back was just terrible, and he still has some cysts that we need to eventually have removed on his back. Right. But it's clear now, and he hardly ever has acne, and it's supposed to be something that lasts for the majority of people forever, right? Correct.

I mean, some people do have to do it again, but I do remember Liam's lips were cracked in the winter, especially, and, you know, everything was just dry on him. Yeah. And, I mean, you do it for, what, 12 weeks or something like that? I can't remember. So it's 15 to 20 weeks. Okay. So you have to do lab work at the beginning, and then you do it in the middle. And if there's any changes in that lab work, then that'll stop it.

But most people do okay with it. You know, there are some weird side effects from it, depression, suicidal ideation, psychosis, stuff like that. These are exceedingly rare, but the odds are not zero. There can be erectile dysfunction and reduce libido as well, but those are not considered permanent changes. So, you know, it's uncomfortable while you're doing it, but the end result is pretty astounding. Yeah, it really is. I mean, he was really having a hard time. He did everything that they told him to do, and just nothing was working.

And so it's one of those you've got to consider the risk benefits and alternatives, but go someplace where they do it a lot. Dermatology is, you know, a place that treats acne every day. Your primary care provider, they may be okay at it. I mean, I did it because I lived in the middle of a rural area that had no dermatologists for miles and miles around when I lived in Vermont, stuff like that. But we took our kid to a dermatologist because they do five or six of these every day and they know what they're doing. And if you'll follow everything that they say to the letter, you'll be okay for the most part, really almost universal. I mean, it's horrible to let a kid grow up with the pitted scarring on their face. And I mean, those are things you can't get rid of.

Yeah. Yeah, and it's just tough enough to be a teenager. My God. Oh, God, yeah, no. I mean, it's tough enough, I mean, without acne, you know, then you add it. It's just awful. Totally great. Yep, you're right.

Well, okay, so very good. So, yes, risk benefits alternatives, consider those, talk to the kid. And you and if the kid is under 18, you've got to make the decision form. And just if you do get someone experience and then do exactly what they tell you to do. Okinault. Gotcha. All right. Here's one.

Hello. Louis family. Oh, God. Here we go. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.

Hey, say. Hello. Hello. Good. Quick question for you. A scab. You get cut or whatever. Is that just dry blood or disoble?

body realize that its delicate little wrapping has been damaged and it tries to send other things there to help with wound care and fill it off. I always wonder about that. It's a great sort of basic

biology question. Pia, I didn't warn you, but that this was coming. Do you have anything to say about it? So he was asking if a scab is just dry blood versus other new tissues? Yeah, there's an active process going on. There is an active process going on.

Yes. And I cannot remember all the activities of the granulation tissue. That's okay. So you start having what's more

specific than granulation tissue? Well, the first thing you have to do is stop the bleeding. So you have hemostasis. So you work

with those blood factors all the time. If you want to talk about that one, then I can hit the other ones.

Well, you have fibrinogen monomers. Ooh. So we have, we do. You in our system have a clotting cascade. So there are several factors, what, 12 factors that go into cascade.

Ultimately, you have monomers or tiny filaments of fibrin that get conjoined into polymers or long strands of fibrin. Those make kind of a network together. They trap other cells like platelets in them. Yeah, platelets. And cause a clot to achieve hemostasis or stop it. So you stop the bleeding. So you stop the bleeding. So that's the first phase is you've got to stop the bleeding so you may get some constriction of the blood vessels.

And then the platelets start to aggregate. You don't want them to do it. They'll aggregate in the presence of injury. So there's fat. It's crazy. How does your skin know it's been damaged? You know, it has to start sending out saying, hey, we got a problem here. It's crazy.

It's wild. It's all chemical markers and stuff. And all these things sort of. They're there just waiting to get that signal. They get the call. Then you get inflammation is the second one. That's when the white blood cells come in and the fibroblasts and stuff start to set up shop. To do that, they need fluid to move around in.

They can't move around on dry skin, so they will flood the area with fluid by opening up the tight junctions of capillaries and stuff like that so they can move around a little bit more freely. And that can cause pain and redness and that kind of stuff. And then you have proliferation where the skin cells start to reform around this matrix. And then you have remodeling where all the fiberblasts and everything will start to shrink to draw the scar down to the smallest size that the body can work. And it's incredible. Yeah, it is. If you really want to see something, it's beyond the scope of the show, but you can Google just. skin healing on

or, well, YouTube search it and see videos on it. It's unbelievable. I still think the craziest thing are the 3D animations they do of making proteins, you know, transcribing DNA into messenger RNA and then taking it over to the ribosomal RNA

and then transcribing it. What are the molecules that look like they're walking around? Yeah, the ribosomes. And then the MRNA goes in and it's like a factory and it's just reading off instructions. Put this amino acid. Now put this one. Now put this one. It's the craziest damn thing.

It really is. How in the hell did that ever get started? That's insane. You think about it. Pretty complicated. Yeah. I'm going to do a live stream either tonight or this week about the anthropic principle, about how this universe is just finely tuned for life.

and how that is and the anthropic principle says well if it wasn't if it weren't we wouldn't be here and that's all it is yeah that's all it is and so are there is it just dumb chance

that all of these constants were of the because you can't derive these constants from the math like the fine structure constant and the strong force and the weak nuclear force

all these things you can't derive those They just are numbers that are that way. Right. You know, you can discover them, but you can't derive them. There's no underlying principle that says that the strong force has to be this specific strength. They just are. They're born that way when the universe is born. And is that just dumb chance that one in 100 trillion, quadrillion, you know, different pure mutations that we got the one that life,

can or was it by design or is there just truly an infinite number of universes the true multiverse with a whole bunch of each one of them with different parameters and only the ones in the middle actually can support life so I don't know who knows this is unanswerable it will drive you nuts the origins of God

well right well yes but God of course and so that's some people's response to it. Well, it has to be by intelligent design. And then other people reject that. And either way, whether you believe it or you reject it, it's one or the other. And it's still an incredible result.

Yeah, regardless. And here we are the eyes and ears of the creator of the universe, which is what Kilgore Trout said in Breakfast with Champions was a Kurtz Vonnegut book. Somebody said, wrote on the bathroom wall, what's the meaning of life? And Kilgore Trout wrote back to be the eyes and the ears of the creator of the universe. You dolt or something like that, you idiot. And, I mean, we are the way that the universe regards itself.

That's the only way it can regard itself. You've got a cold, dark universe just sitting there. You create life, and now the universe can regard itself. We're not separate. We're not bags of meat that are just separate from the universe. we are part of the universe just like our hair is part of us we don't consciously

we're not aware of growing our hair it's just something that that our head does and we're not aware of you know black black holes and you know sucking in matter and stuff like that but it's just part of it

but we are part of the universe that does that we're just as much of a part of it as our hair is part of our body So, you know, it is, it's maddening. And then we go to Taco Bell and they give us mild sauce instead of fire sauce. We get pissed. Start cussing. It's like, really, are we thinking about the big, you know, the big picture now?

No. So anyway. All right. Now, maybe now I don't have to do my live stream. I was pretty much hit. Save yourself the work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not sure how we got off on that, but it's still, it's interesting.

Did you see the fluid family question there? No, I did not. From Franklin? Nope. If you'll scroll back up, you'll see it. Okay. Asking if the calorie counter on the Apple Watch is more accurate than the one on the Peloton. Oh, wow.

All of these things are indirect measurements. The only true way to determine how many calories you're burning is through a chamber where, have you ever seen one of these? You want to talk about it? No, go ahead. Yeah, I've just. There's a chamber where they measure how you have to breathe into this thing. It measures how much carbon dioxide you are exhaling and how much what, how much heat you're giving off. And then when you do like an exercise or something, they'll determine how many ergs of energy you're using in, you know, spinning the wheels of the bike.

And then they can add all of that up and they can. get a pretty good idea of how many actual calories you've burned. Short of that, it's just, they're just extrapolating from data that they have. So none of them are very accurate, but you'll also notice that they're in the same ballpark. You won't have one, say, 10,000, the other one say 30. You know, this one will say 566, and this one will say 450, and they're in the ballpark. Yeah, close enough. And who gives this shit anyway?

Yeah, as long as they're close. You don't know what your basal metabolic rate is. You can calculate it, but it's not right. Just get off your ass and get moving. Yeah. Yeah. Who cares? And, you know, ultimately, yes, we want to, if we want, if our goal is to lose weight, we want to burn more calories than we consume.

And, you know, good luck using a calculator to figure that out. You could get in, again, get in the ballpark and then decrease it enough. So if you calculate your basal metabolic rate to be 2,000 calories, And we could go through that for somebody if we wanted to next time. Scott, maybe we should do that. No, it's too much math. It's easy math, though. And then you say, okay, so it's 2000, so let's do 1,500 calories.

So if the 2,000 is plus or minus 15%, then taking in 1,500 calories is going to be sure to give you weight loss over time. That's the old school way of doing weight loss. So, but anyway, all right. Interesting. Good stuff. Yeah, yeah, fascinating. So the answer is, who cares? Are you guys still using Noom?

I incorporated Noom into my worldview, so I'm not really doing it anymore. Okay. I mean, I'm not doing the app. Yeah, like once you're on it for a while, you just figure it off. Yeah, it's a six-week to three-month program. Yeah. So it's stabilized me. Now I need to, I just, I'm not mindful at this point.

of what I'm eating and I need to do better. I did really well when I got back from my wellness retreat and I'm kind of backslown again. You may have to go for another trip. Yeah, well, maybe. You know, you can't expect one week to fix you, but I know what I need to do.

Now I just need to get the willpower to do it. Right. That's a big part of it. Just in time for the holidays. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay, dokey.

Let's see here. How about... Hey, Dr. Steve. I got a question for you about poison ivy since the summer and I just got some on my ankles and a couple other spots. And I was just wondering how long it takes to go away. I know that there's all these remedies like oatmeal baths and calamine lotion. How does it work? I was reading online. I can't really find out any solid information. And worst case scenario, if you get it in your really allergic to it. I heard they give you a steroid injection and I'm just wondering why. Like, what would happen

if you were just fucked and just got it all over your body and couldn't figure out anything? Yeah. Have you guys ever had poison ivy? Oh, God, yes. I used to get it so bad that it would blister up

and I would just have clear fluid. That's how mine used to get to do. And people think that those are contagious or that you can spread it from that, you cannot. There's no, there's no poison ivy

antigen in the fluid in those blisters. Tacey, you ever had it? No. Okay, so you don't know how miserable this. Hey, we went out, we were in a friend of a friend of ours was asked us to help pull some weeds around a place and we didn't realize

we were pulling. We thought it was ivy, it was poison ivy, so stuff and, you know, bags of poison ivy down into trash bags I had up both arms Oh, yeah. That's awful. Yeah, it's steroid packs and shots. I sling-bladed a whole side of a hill, and it was all...

Got all down my shirt and on my back. Everywhere, it's awful. Gets in your nuts. Medscape says seven to 21 days as expected resolution. That's about right. Well, you know, and Dr. Stephen, I think... You don't have to wait for it to go away, though. And I think a lot of people don't realize you can actually get it.

You don't have to get it immediately. You can get on a pant or a shirt or something. I got last winter, we had a... A tree parsley fell down. I went to chainsaw it down. I went back in it's like, shit, man, I've got poison ivy. Yeah. And I did.

It was dead. It's called a delayed type hypersensitivity reaction. Immediate type would be anaphylaxis, you know, eat shellfish. So it's delayed. And it is a volatile gas. It's the name of the molecule that you're allergic to is Ehrushial. Okay. And poison ivy has it.

Oaksin-Oak, all of those have this oily sap that contains this Erosiol in it. And the higher the concentration, the faster, the itch and the blistering will come. So let's say that it's a very calm, hot day, and you walk past one of those giant poison ivy plants that's climbing up the trunk of a tree. Right. And there is a cloud of this oil with this Ehrushial, and then you walk through it. Well, the place that gets 10 parts per billion will show up first, okay? And that could be on your forearm. And then five parts per billion later and one part per billion even later than that.

And you get the illusion that it's spreading because you're scratching it, it's spreading. But it's not. Once you went home and took that per shower, the exposure's over. but the damage has already been done. So people think that they're, you know, scratching it by scratching it. So as long as you wash afterward, whatever exposure you've had, that's all you're going to get.

But when you get a really bad one, yes, steroids are the way to go, and I don't think a shot usually is going to be enough. It's almost always going to have to be a seven-to-12-day steroid dose pack, and they'll start you off on a high dose, and it starts to go away immediately. It's amazing. Yeah, but if it's done too quickly, if you don't taper it long enough, you'll get a resurgence.

That's correct. That's correct. Very good. Yeah, so, yeah, you need to take it all because, yeah, P.A. Lydia's right. You'll go, oh, I'm fine. You know, it went away in a couple of days, and then you stop taking it and comes right back. Yeah, in a lot of the places you can tolerate topical stuff, but if it gets near your eyes, it's a, that's a very important thing. Yeah, or big giant blisters.

So I'm not a fan of Calamine, and I'm not a fan of topical best. Benadryl. Top of gold Benadryl can actually make itching worse. It can activate some of the immune cell or cells in the skin. So if you're going to use Benadryl, you take it as a pill, diphtromine or any other, any histamine. You can do that. Anything that makes it feel better, the reason you do the oatmeal baths is just, it just moisturizes the skin. That's all. It helps you to stop itching for five minutes. As soon as you fall asleep that night, you're still going to. going to wake up itching, though. So really the only thing for a widespread

poison ivy attack is going to be it's going to be steroids. All right? Good question, though. Tacey, I don't know why you never had it. I had it when I was a kid and then I don't ever get it anymore.

I can eat this stuff now. Oh, Lord. Okay, Dr. Scott, before we go, we had a question from the fluid family, I believe. It's from Anonymous. I've got little white pockets of white stuff, like small pimples on my sack. Had had them removed, surgically removed years ago.

But they do keep coming back, just wondering what they are and what they can do about it. Okay, do you guys, anybody want to jump in? I think I know what it is. Ford Ice? Yeah, yeah, it's very good, Dr. Scott. I'll give you that. to talk about it? Not really.

Give thyself of this. I don't know how to treat it. I just know what they are. Okay. Out synodontidate dermatology. Well, there is a thing called scrotal calcinosis too.

Okay. Scrodle calcinosis are little decalcium deposits and if you let them go, the whole scrotum will get taken over. PA Lydia, you were nodding and you did you have something going to say.

I was just looking back to my last PA school lecture where I had to do benign and non-benine penign penile. lesions, but I couldn't remember the name. Yeah, so there's, on the penis, around the rim of the Roman War helmet, you will have these pearly

papules, pearly penile papules, and those are fun. But this, four-dice spots are usually found around the lips, mouth, or genitals, they're little white papules. They're tiny, they're slightly

elevated. You okay over there, buddy? Apologize. Man's knees. They appear the same in everybody, despite whatever shade of color your skin is. And they're really sort of common and normal, and they're just ectopic sebaceous glands. That's all they are, which means that they are oil glands that are growing in a place where they're not supposed to be, period. And you can have them scraped off or you can have them laser off or you can just leave them in the hell alone. But if it is scrotol calcinosis, that's another thing.

and maybe one of these days I can do a live stream where I could show people pictures of these things. Maybe we could do that. Cool. I wonder if I would get in trouble with YouTube showing genital pictures, but they're up from a medical standpoint, you know, genital skin and stuff. Oh, I think if I did it right. Yeah, probably.

They're being ridiculous right now. Yeah. All right. I mean, did you hear what somebody did to Stuttering John? It really was bad. I mean, you know, whatever you think is Stuttering John, this should not have happened to anybody who's trying to make a living doing live streaming.

So he was live streaming. He gave out his link to his stream yard. If you once you do that, those people can show up in your queue and you can put them on if you want to. And they, you know, there's a string of them down the bottom. You click on it. And he had sent the link to a guy. who was also at war with somebody he was at war with,

so he thought that that person would be an ally. But what turned out, he'd forgotten that he'd been making up songs about that person calling him fat and all this kind of stuff. So as soon as he sent it to that guy, he put it up on the internet and somebody joined impersonating somebody else called the Dabble Storyan, I think.

And the Dabble Story is like a historian of the Dabble Verse. and had been on some other shows before but this person called himself that but it wasn't that person and they talked for a little bit and then he this person who was impersonating played a video

that was let's say excretory very graphically excretory and had a person in the background yelling out racial epithets and John didn't get it off quick enough And his channel was cut Was, yeah, cut for Gosh, I don't know how long

It was quite some time For like a week or something And, you know, the question is Was that really John's fault And what YouTube says is you're in charge of your You know It's like a surgeon, the captain of the ship Anything wrong in the OR is the surgeon's fault

Yep, yep, yeah So anyway, that happened So people wonder, well, why don't you take live calls? That's one of the reasons. One of the last live calls we had, we had Flash Brown on, who was an adult film star. And the caller just before them was screaming, you know, racial epithets at us. And it was like, yeah. Well, he was inebriated.

The two things weren't related. It was just really bad timing. So anyway. It's a lot. Yeah. So it's like, okay, so we do voice emails like Dean Adele did. anyway but on our live stream

when we do the Patreon you know we have the patrons get in and if there's a problem I just edit it out and there never has been so far knock on wood now that I've said that it'll be a problem but anyway all right anything else from over there

well we've got a real quick one from Cush yeah a question about long COVID being thrown around he tested positive at home a month ago but he said he's now just starting to feel normal.

Yeah. So you don't talk about this this time or next time? Well, we can talk about it. Yeah, well, as I say, you know, I was just, I have this discussion about 12 times a day, it seems.

Yeah. And that's not really long COVID, is it? No. And a lot of folks, they'll say, well, you know, well, they, I've heard it could cause long, this could be part of long COVID. I'm like, no, that's a bursitis in your hip.

You know, or this could be long COVID. I'm like, nope, you're just constipated. You know, and so, but long COVID, I have seen issues with sinuses, hearing, and certainly fatigue. Well, and I've got to scarred up lung. I mean, that ought to qualify. Yes, the point being is it is a real thing, but always, always factor in all the other things that could be going on. Correct. Yeah.

Yeah. Just treat it all. And not everything is. Many are called, but few are actually long COVID. Yeah, exactly. Do you just stay healthy, eat your vitamins, take your vitamins, get up your ass, what's spoken. You know the drug. Check your stupid.

Check your stupid. For four nights. For four nights. It's a good question, Kish. Thank you. Yes, it is. Very good. All right.

Well, listen. Thanks. Dr. Scott. Thanks, Tacey. Thanks, P.A. Lydia. Thanks to everyone who's made this show happen over the. the years. Listen to our Sirius XM

show on the Faction Talk channel. Serious Channel 103, Saturdays at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern on demand and other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website at dr.steve.com

for schedules, podcasts, and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoking, get off your asses, get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. Thanks, everybody. Goodbye, everyone. Bye. See you guys.

Thank you.