Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 585 - Neurolink, Zika and Intermittent Fasting

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Dr Steve, Dr Scott, and Tacie discuss: Neurolink Brain tumors and Zika blood brain barrier adam's apple? pinpoint pupils intermittent 16-8 fasting covid duration superchats! Please visit: simplyherbals.net/cbd-sinus-rinse (the best he's ever made. Seriously.) RIGHT NOW GET A NEW DISCOUNT ON THE ROADIE 3 ROBOTIC TUNER! roadie.doctorsteve.com (the greatest gift for a guitarist or bassist! The robotic tuner!) see it here: stuff.doctorsteve.com/#roadie Also don't forget: Cameo.com/weirdmedicine (Book your old pal right now because he's cheap! "FLUID!") shoutout1.com/weirdmedicine (either one works!) Keep Dr Steve in Ham Radio! Send a TIP here! Most importantly! CHECK US OUT ON PATREON!  ALL NEW CONTENT! Robert Kelly, Mark Normand, Jim Norton, Gregg Hughes, Anthony Cumia, Joe DeRosa, Pete Davidson, Geno Bisconte, Cassie Black ("Safe Slut"). Stuff you will never hear on the main show ;-) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Your show was better when he had medical questions. Hey! Man, you are one pathetic loser. You see? You see? You're stupid minds. Stupid. Stupid.

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. Let you give me the respect that I'm entitled to! I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolivide stripping from my nose.

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

I think I'm doomed, then I'll have to go insane. I want a requiem for my disease. So I'm paging Dr. Steve. Dr. Steve. From the world famous Cardiff Electric Network Studios in beautiful downtown, Tuki City, it's weird medicine. 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. You can't find an answer anywhere else. Give us a call. 347-664323. That's 347. Pooh-Hill. 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 you hear with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking over with your health care provider.

Very good. Please don't forget stuff. Dot, Dr. Steve.com. That's stuff. Dot, Dr. Steve.com for all your Amazon and online shopping needs. And check out Rodie, R-O-A-D-I-E dot. Dr. Steve.com. if you've got a guitar or a bass

or you know someone that does or you know someone that wants to learn an instrument. Go to rody.com. They got all kinds of cool crap, including the Rody Robotic Tumor. Tumor, the Rody Robotic Tumor. And they also have the Rody Coach that'll teach you out to play an instrument

if you don't know how. And check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyherbles.net. And patreon. com dot com slash weird medicine and we do exclusive content over there behind the scenes stuff Tacey and I will be we'll do a show again someday I've been doing live streams over there but we'll do something at some point and the you can hear our interviews with

celebrities on the exam room and we had the troika of Opian Anthony and Chad Zumach and Gino Bisconti and all kinds of people over there so I think we need to to get Pat Dixon next. We'll talk about that in a minute. And then cameo.com slash weird medicine. I'll say fluid to you, mama. And that's all there is to say about that. It's cheap.

Dirt cheap. Dirt cheap. Dirt cheap. And all the money goes to a good place. To me, to my ham radio fund. Oh, gosh. Yes. To fund moon bounce with my buddy Dale.

By the way, there is a robot on the moon. that is broadcasting ham radio. Now, how cool is that? It's not like 437.51 megahertz. And with a decent antenna, you should be able to hear it when the moon is overhead. Ooh, that's pretty cool. That's awesome.

That's awesome. $250. Assholes. Okay. Lord and lady, douchey bag. Check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. That's simplyerbils.net.

And do you remember last time somebody had texted me and they had bought CBD nasal spray somewhere else and we were saying, you weren't the only one out there? He said, there sucks, and it burned his nose and he asked me what your website was. So anyway, yeah, simplyerbils.net. Dr. Scott makes amazing CBD nasal spray. And it actually is fantastic.

It's something I can say this isn't an advertisement. It's just a fact that's what he does. And check him out at simplyerbils.net. All right, very good. What else we got? Anything? There you go. All right.

Well, Tacey, you ready to do some topics already? Sure. Let me, a couple of things. Before we do that, I was on Pat Dixon's show last night. And it was supposed to be like 40 minutes. We went two hours. His show starts at 11 o'clock on Eastern time in the night, in the evening. And I was, by the last 20 minutes, I'm like, Pat, we were looking up words in the dictionary.

And so I say, you could probably just cut out the last 20 minutes and we'd be fine. But I really enjoy just hanging out with him. And we're going to try to get him to our local comedy club up here. And I think you guys will really. That'd be cool. Enjoy Mr. Dixon. Cool. So anyway, I'm going to have Diane.

What was her name on this show? Oh, Lady Diagnosis. Yeah, Lady Diagnosis. We're going to have her drive him around. Maybe there will be some sort of connection there. I don't know. We'll see. But anyway.

All right. But, yeah, that was fun. Check that out. I think his YouTube is P. Dixon. And we talked about a wide-ranging bunch of topics. I mean, we're just jumping around everywhere. It's good. All right, Tase, you ready?

Sure. All right. Here we go. It's Tacey's Time of Topics. A time for Tacey to discuss topics of the day. Not to be confused with Topic Time with Harrison Young, which is copyrighted by Harrison Young and Area 58 Public Access. And now, here's Tacey. Well, hello, everyone.

Hello. So these two topics are a little. above my pay grade. Oh, pretty good. Big words. Oh, boy. Yep. The first topic

is Elon Musk says his startup Neurrelink has implanted a device and it's first human. What? What? And it says initial users Okay, this is not bullshit. Initial users will be those who have lost the use of their limbs.

Really? Yes. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So they're going to bypass the spinal cord with this. Is that what they're doing? I don't know. So they'll be able to send commands to this thing with their brain, and then the thing, the neuralink will send commands to whatever the interface is with their spinal column.

Well, let's read the article. Oh, okay. Well, it sounded like you were done, so I would just try to amplify a little. But this is interesting. Musk made the answer. announcement on X. He said the patient whom he did not identify received an implant Sunday and is recovering well. Okay. The initial results he added showing promising neuron spike detection. He gave no other details about the procedure. Okay. Yeah. So they implanted it and that was successful.

Now we need to see if it, you know, results in it. That was being able to do something. Right. That's easy part. Yeah. So it says scientists for decades have worked on similar ideas for brain computer interfaces that, if successful, could one day assist people who are physically disabled and change how people communicate or more. There were no immediate independent confirmation of Neurolinks projects. One of the competitors' precision neuroscience implanted its device in a human for the first time last year. And?

That doesn't say. Musk's announcement comes eight months after Neurlinks said it had received approval from the FDA to conduct its first inhuman clinical study. Okay. In September, NeurLink said it would begin recruiting patients. Neurlink, which is based in San Francisco, did not immediately respond to a request for more information. There is a syndrome called Locked In Syndrome, where people's brains are working, except they can't send any signals to the body. So it's always high up in the brainstem kind of where they've had swelling or a stroke or something that cuts off the,

the signals going from the motor part of the brain to the body, and it's maddening. And they can't talk. They can move their eyes most of the time because the eye interfaces higher up than that. And I always told my buddy Dale that I'm going to be blinking out in Morse code. So make sure you come, if I have locked in syndrome, I will be blinking in Morse code. So, you know, they're going to say, well, he's just a blinky kind of failure. and it's going to be, no, I'm trying to communicate. Wasn't that that...

And I'm going to be saying, Tacey tried to kill me. Wasn't that the movie that we watched in a philosophy class back in college where the lady was... The guy was injured in, like, the war, and he was... Couldn't move or couldn't talk or do anything. He was locked in all that he kept blinking his eyes and nobody could figure out into the nurse was. He was saying, kill me, kill me, kill me. Oh, no, I don't know. Oh, let me think about it.

I'll think of the name. That's awful. That was terrible. Musk said Monday that Neurrelink's first product would be called telepathy. Oh, wow. Neurlink has faced accusations in recent years that it is mistreated some of its monkeys. It's used in its experiments. The Agricultural Department said last year that after an investigation, it did not find any violations of animal research rules other than its self-reported,

2019 incident in which a Neurlink surgeon used an unapproved sealant to close holes drilled into. to a monkey skull. I bet it was like epoxy or something. The telepathy product would allow people to control their phones or computers and through those devices couple that with

AI, can you imagine? Yeah, it says almost any other device with thought only. Think about that. Initial users would be those who have lost their limbs. Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed topist or auctioneer that is the goal right yeah that had to be frustrating with for him to

generate um text one letter at a time but he wrote a whole books that way because he had nothing else to do nothing else to do yeah yeah it's crazy and i'm looking in the the fluid family which by the way if you want to join the fluid family it's youtube dot com slash at weird medicine usually 1 p.m. on Saturday's Eastern. But Tracy with an eye is in there saying can we get different on hold music?

And it's like, fuck off. That's my music from my group on. That's funny. Yeah, it's hilarious. We'll work on that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we will work on that. I mean, I mean, we work so hard on the show. He needs to work on that. There you go.

The second article is Zika virus as an uncolytic treatment of human neuroblastomocels requires CD-24. Yeah, this is a big deal. Now, this, I have no idea what that sentence means. Okay, so Zika virus is a virus, and it's been, that's the one, if I remember correctly, that if women get it while they're pregnant, their kid is born with microcephaly if our care is at risk for it. And so they want to use it as an oncolitics.

So there's this whole thing called viral oncolitics, where you're using. viruses as either transports or as markers for the immune system. So we talked about this once before, just to give everybody background, using measles virus as a marker for multiple myeloma. And they genetically engineered these measles viruses to, and it was the partially killed vaccine, by the way, It was measles vaccine, so it is an attenuated virus. And they genetically engineered them to accept a radioactive iodine atom, not to use that as a therapeutic, but just as a marker. Right. So they injected six million units or doses of measles vaccine into this person with multiple myeloma, which is a bone marrow disorder.

It causes tumors all scattered around the body in the bones. And then they put them in front of a scanner and damned if the measles vaccine didn't all go to the myeloma cells. And they lit up. That's why they put the radioactive iodine in there. And so these things were carrying those, and then the isotope would fire off, and then they could pick up, I don't know what, they pick up in a gamma ray or, you know, an alpha particle or something. I don't know what it is. anyway and then the immune system went in and said hey you guys aren't supposed to be here and went and killed every cell that was infected by a measles virus and that just happened to be

all the myeloma cells so that resulted in a cure of that patient so viral oncoletics is a pretty interesting thing these little machines viruses are just machines for reproducing themselves or little nano machines and if we can harness them Well, then, remember I talked about there's no purpose for human pathologic viruses and we should kill them all. Yes. Well, maybe we can turn them into something where there is a purpose. Yes. Yeah.

And then I would have to reverse my fatwa on pathogenic viruses because we need some of them around so we can use them. But anyway, go ahead and tell you. Okay. Neuroblastoma is the second most common childhood tumor. Survival is poor even with intensive therapy. In a search for therapies to neuroblastoma, we assess the oncolytic potential of Zika virus. Zika virus is an emerging mosquito-borne pathogen unique among flaviviruses. Flavivirus.

Because of its association with congenital defects. Right. Recent studies have shown that neuronal progenitor cells are likely the human target of Zika virus. Right. In this study? So, wait a minute. So neuron progenitor cells are the cells that become neurons. Right.

That's why these kids were being born with small heads because the virus preferentially was attacking those. And when you have a brain cancer, they have similar, those cells have similar characteristics to neuronal progenitor cells. Because they're growing, you know, new abnormal cells. Go ahead and taste. It says in this study, we show that neuroblastoma cells are wildly permissive to Zika infection, revealing extensive cytopathic effects and producing high titers of virus. Damn. However, a single cell line appeared poorly responsive to infection, producing undetectable levels of non-structural protein 1, NS1, limited CPE, and low virus titers.

A comparison of these. I love how you always make fun of me if I'm talking too technical, and then you just do these stories. This is Scott's fault. A comparison of those poorly permissive cells to highly permissive neuroblastoma cells revealed a dramatic loss in the expression of the cell surface glycoprotein CD-24 in poorly permissive cells. Complementation of CD-24 expressive expression in these cells led to the production of detectable levels of NS1 expression after infection with Zika as well as dramatic increases. viral titers and CPE. Okay, so the bottom line, Zika. Mike.

Good. Be good. Zika in the right place, good. Yeah. Zika in the wrong place, bad. Says these results suggest a possible role for CD-24 and host cell specificity by Zika virus and offer a potential therapeutic target for its treatment. Wow. In addition, Zika viral therapy can serve as an adjunctive treatment for neuroblastoma by targeting tumor cells that can lead to recurrent.

treatment disease, and failure. Cool. Isn't it great? Thank you, Tase. Thank you, Scott, for the hard-to-read article. No, but, you know, the implication of it is really something. So that was neuroblastoma. Yeah, and I got that from Amanda.

She sent it to me last week. Amanda. Oh, Amanda. Yeah. Our Amanda? Yes. She was wondering if I'd seen it. I had not.

So thank Amanda. Let's look at, well, okay, I'm went to clinical trials, looking for neuroblastoma with the intervention of Zika and found nothing. But let me try oncolitic and see. Oh, here we go. Newcastle disease virus in glioblastoma multiformy, sarcoma and neuroblastoma. So this is another viral oncoletic. So patients with specific metastatic cancers who failed prior therapeutic regimes,

will be treated with this NDV Newcastle disease virus for at least a year or until disease progression. They will measure progression-free disease and posits that it will be extended. Wow. How about that? Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things that they could do is if they find viruses that are trophic, in other words, that like to attack specific cancer cells, you can use those. as a vector or as a treatment themselves. Because when the body detects a cell that is infected by viruses

and producing new viral particles, the body goes in and tries to kill that cell. How about that? That's incredible. Yeah, Newcastle virus has a long history, is a broad system oncolytic that can destroy tumor cells and stimulate the immune system. Well, shit. Can you imagine if we had a treatment for glioblastoma,

for me, that, you know, provided long-lasting results without having to do surgery and the horrible chemos that they have to go through and stuff. Oh, God, no. Yeah, that'd be awesome. We have a question that actually is apropos to this, and it is from, I think, Clinton, and it's about blood-brain barrier. Hi, Dr. Steve. Can you explain the blood-brain barrier?

I've heard it said that only small molecules can pass. And I'm curious about, like, spinal fluid, how it washes the brain, if that's, in fact, how it operates. No. I don't know if any of this is true, but if you could explain that. Thanks. Yeah, actually, the spinal fluid is behind the blood brain barrier. So the blood brain barrier is a... it's just, it's a mechanism by which the central nervous system protects itself from certain things.

So obviously alcohol can get through the blood brain barrier. There you go. Cannabinoids can. What? But methyl naltrexone cannot. So you take a good example of the blood brain barrier is a drug called naltrexone, which is an antagonist, an antagonist. It competes for mu opioid receptors. So I'll translate that into English.

So if you take a lore tab and you take naloxone at the same time, then it will, if both of them are present in the bloodstream, then you will have, shit, sorry, naloxone has to be injected. Now trachshone can be taken orally. Anyway, if they're both present at the mu receptor at the same time, the naloxone or naltrexone will compete for the mu-opioid receptor and it will win. And the narcotic won't be able to hit it and it blocks the effects. So when you have someone that is suffering from an opioid overdose, we will use naloxone nasal spray or naloxone by IV. and it will competitively knock the narcotics off of those receptors, and the patient will wake up and not die.

At least right then. At least right then, correct. Yeah. And by the way, if you're using Narcan in the home and you've just saved somebody, you've got to call 911 because it will last about 15 minutes. I've had people on Narcan drips before where they had to be on it for a long, a long time because they had so much opioid in their system that we would knock it off. They'd wake up and then go right under again when that stuff came out of their system.

But, yeah, it's a selective semi-permeable membrane. So if I give someone naltrexone orally, it will block their opioid. But if I add a methyl group to it and call it methyl-naltrexone, it will no longer be able to cross the blood-brain barrier. You're only adding a carbon and three hydrogens. That's it. And that keeps it from crossing the blood-brain barrier. And why would you want to do that? Well, that will block the activity of narcotic at, say, the level of the bowel

while leaving the narcotic activity in the central nervous system alone. So it's a pretty clever thing. So narcotics cause constipation. It's one of their adverse effects. And using methyl naltrexone will block that activity. at the level of the bowel, again, leaving the pain relief part of the narcotic alone, and those people can laxate normally and move their bowels. Cool.

Does that make sense? Oh, yeah. That's good stuff. No, if I explain that very well. But anyway, so cerebral blood vessels can regulate molecule and ion movement between the blood and the brain. And this is a problem. Sometimes you want to get medicine into the brain, and you can't do that because it won't

across the blood brain barrier. So they do all these fiddling around and fiddle farting around. But Dr. Scott or Tacey, one of you guys brought an article about defeating that blood brain barrier by using ultrasound. Yes. And so you could apply an ultrasound, I guess, at the correct frequency to the scalp. And that would open up the blood brain barrier in that area. Just for a short period of time.

Long enough for the medicine to get in. And then you take it off. and it closes back up again. Yep. That's pretty cool. Yeah, which lowers the amount of medications needed to treat certain things. Yeah. It makes a lot easier, a lot healthy.

And by the way, I want to interrupt real quick. Amanda came through again. That movie I was referring to as Johnny Got His Gun. It's a 1971 movie. Okay. Yeah. All right. So if you want to watch a crazy movie, that's a good one.

Really? Oh, yeah. Johnny Got His Gun. All right. Well, thank you, Amanda. all right let's see how about this one

let's try this hey doctor Steve can you explain what Adam's apple is I never really learned it in anatomy well when I took it in well great school

but I've seen like tall skinny men with them and it was always a tell tell sign you could tell somebody who was cross-dressing by their Adams apple do women have it is it only skinny guys Thanks.

Yeah, I have seen some people that have a really prominent Adams apple, and it's just basically a cartilage in front of the larynx. So it's laryngeal cartilage, thyroid cartilage, and it covers the voice box. And everybody has the cartilage, but not everybody has that protuberance. I do not have it. So, you know, mine is just absolutely smooth. I never developed it, but I had friends of my brothers.

I remember when I was a kid, they had this huge Adam's apple. That would irritate the shit on me, I think, unless I guess if I had one, it wouldn't. But, you know, the terms Adam's apple comes from Judeo-Christian folk tale about Adam and Eve. God caused an apple to become stuck in Adam's throat after he ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. This is apocryphal. It's not actually in the Hebrew. or Christian Bible. But, you know, everybody has this thyroid cartilage.

And during puberty, it just grows more in some people. I don't know if there's a real function for it. You know, it protects your larynx from injury. And really, there's just no known function for it. It's just one of those things. You know, why do we have noses the way that we do? instead of just two holes in our head like chimps do. So we're riding motorcycle stuff can't go right into your...

Yeah, well, it is good for that. That's been a lack of vigor. Yeah, but anyway. I don't know. I don't know. I've never thought of that. Yeah, it's just thyroid cartilage. That's it. It's the largest of nine cartilages in the larynx or the voice box.

And other parts include the trachea. You know, the trachea is the windpipe. and there's a chrychoid cartilage, an epiglotic cartilage, and an erytoid cartilage, and this is just the biggest one of them, and the most visible. And it does, look, that part of your body is pretty sensitive. You don't want someone to just be able to, you know, bonk you in the front of the neck and stop you from breathing. So that's why it developed was because it's a vulnerable place, and it needs some protection.

It's not, it doesn't give you the protection of bone, but if it was bone then it could fracture it's a lot harder to fracture cartilage you can bend it and you can crease it and you can do all kinds of things

but it's a lot harder to fracture it so I think that's why it's the best of all possible worlds given that we have a head that sits on top of our body and then the thorax is relatively well protected by the rib cage

and if you think about everything got it on the exterior is the cartilage, the ears and the nose Yeah, oh, true. You know, so just, and a lot of that's for weight for the head, too, because the head is, the skull is so heavy. Yes. And that's, you know, that's one of the reason why we have sinus cavities is to lower the weight of the skull. So you would think, yeah, but I was just bowing.

Yeah, because, yeah, it would just be way too heavy. So if your ears were, were bone and your nose was solid bone and your, you're, I guess your Adams is almost solid. On Star Trek, they have aliens are like that all the time. You'd be kind of walking with your head between your knees. They'd just have bone heads. Right, right, right. It'd be too heavy. Well, I'm assuming that if we actually evolved that way that we would have muscles strong enough to hold us up.

I mean, we would have evolved some way to not walk around, just bend over. We'd have huge neck and the shoulder muscles. We'd all look like, you know, linebackers in the NFL or something, super strong. Yeah. That'd be weird. You know, it's hard to imagine aliens that aren't humanoid just because this form makes so much sense to us. but it will be, I'm looking forward to meeting an actual alien someday and see what they really look like. You know, is there, like, for example, the octopus eye has very little, if any, evolutionary counterpart with the human or mammalian eye.

They developed in separate, you know, octopi are invertebrates and they, you know, we are vertebrates and then mammals and octopi evolved this eye separately from ours, but it's almost identical to ours. And so it tells you, at least on this planet, with the nascent, you know, DNA that we got from the very earliest life forms before we split off. from the invertebrates that this is the eye that makes the most sense if you're going to see your eye is going to have to be

constructed this way and so it makes you wonder because we're so alien from Octopi I mean they've got nine brains they have a brain for each arm

and the crown just sets the goals and then the arms have to figure it out on their own they do their own And they do independently. Yeah, right, right. Can you imagine trying to think that way?

No, no. Your brain's just going, arm, you know, I want to lift that thing. And then it goes, okay, and it does it all by itself. Yeah, and the thing, too, is like with their skin, which is so crazy. And, you know, octopus that are grown, you know, in captivity versus the ones that are brought into captivity from living in a wild, you know, they have the ones that are in a wild, have a better ability to change colors, you know, because they have three layers of skin. Right. And the pigment, the pigments change. They're amazing at camouflage.

But the ones live in captivity or born and raised captivity, they don't have that same ability to change colors, yeah. They do, but not. So it's a learned behavior to a certain extent. Isn't it crazy? That's crazy. Octopus is. Yeah, if you Google or I'm sorry, go on YouTube and just search for octopus camouflage, it's crazy. And there's a guy that wrote a book called Children of Time, which was about intelligent spider.

It sounds stupid, but it's awesome. His name's Adrian Chikowski. And he wrote a follow-up book called Children of Ruin that was about Intelligent Octopi. And it's fascinating because he incorporates all the things that they are like when they're animals but then brings it forward to when they're intelligent. For example, the suffrage thing with the spiders was the males were like, you've got to stop killing us when we have sex with you, you know?

Yes. And so the males were oppressed in that society. I don't want to give too many spoilers. That's a really great book. It's really fun to read. Have you seen the, I think it's on YouTube, but the octopus, my teacher of the octopus, where there's a marine biologist, I want to say it lives in, like, in New Zealand on a beach, and he's studying a kelp forest.

Okay. And this is a true story, and he's documenting this, and one day he comes up on the sandbarge, and he sees like this thing that's not been on this little sandbarge. before. Yeah. It looks like a totem pole kind of. Yeah. Of shells.

He gets up to it and all of a sudden that thing just goes, poof. Oh. And it was a little octopus that it made itself look like kind of a totem pole full of shells. And he followed that thing and they became, for lack of a better term, friends. Yeah. So if you guys haven't seen it, it's the most fascinating. The sad thing about octopies, they only live about two years. Yeah.

And this species is only one year. That's the spoilover. That's a heartbreak. Oh, that's terrible. It was awful. It is. They're so smart. We know how it begins, we know how it ends, but the entire show is, it's an absolute, just magnificently done thing.

It's the best thing I've ever watched. There's a guy that, this has nothing to do with weird medicine, but it's just interesting. It is interesting. There's a guy that created an obstacle course for an octopus, and it had all these tests in it. And to get the shrimp, this thing had to solve all these problems and flip switches. and do this stuff, and then unscrew things and move from one place to the other and use logic to do it. And it was incredible watching that thing, learn how to do that. And you could see the arms doing their own thing.

You know, they're all just kind of feeling around, trying to see what's going on, and then sending messages to the main brain thing. I think this is what we need to do. It's amazing. Anyway, all right. Good stuff. Very good. All of that from an Adam's apple.

That's crazy. Talk about a wormhole. I know. All right, let's try this one. Hi, Dr. Steve. I went to the eye doctor last week, and they put those drops in your eyes to dilate. Right. And I guess it's for seeing farther in the eye.

But I remember doing narcotics back in the day, and it would do the same thing. I was just wondering, what is the, what is, why does it happen when you do narcotics like that? Well, actually, narcotics cause myosis rather than my dryasis, right? So when your eye is dilated, it's called my dryiasis. And I think when you take narcotics, you get pinpoint pupils, right? God, it's been so long. Why am I having a, I should know this. Senior moment.

Yes, pinpoint pupils, narcotic. I'm just going to put it in the, well, we don't use the word narcotic, but let me see, what medications cause pin, yes, okay, phew, thank goodness. Common causes of pinpoint pupils are codeine, fentanyl, hydrocodone, oxycodone, all the opioids. So when you have a drug like an opioid, it has all kinds of effects. Some of them we call, you know, targeted or positive effects like pain control. And then some of them are negative effects like constipation or respiratory depression. But they're all just effects.

It has a bunch of different effects. Some of them we think are positive. Some we think are negative. And the pinpoint pupil is another thing. When the mu-opioid receptor is stimulating in the brain, the pupil shuts down, you know, closes down. And is there a reason for that? I don't know. you know, maybe when

I can't even think anything right now what the purpose of that would be in the endogenous opioids when you're having pain and you're secreting your own native pain relievers which don't work all that well

but they work better than nothing I guess why there would be an advantage to shutting down your pupil. I don't know what that would be. I could think about it. I think of something I'll bring it up next week. But that's just another effect. That one's neither good nor bad, so it's sort of a neutral effect.

So the ones that we think are bad, we call those side effects or adverse effects, but they're just all effects. And there are just some substances have these positive effects. Beta blockers, good example. They have positive effects on blood pressure, on public speaking panic, high hurt rate, those kinds of things, but they also cause erectile dysfunction. These are all just effects. Some are positive, some are negative. Now, when they use eye drops, they often have sort of an atropine or anticholinergic type effect, and those will serve to. paralyze the muscles in the eye, and therefore, the pupils will open up wide.

And when they do that, they can see more. They're not seeing farther. They can just see a, it makes it easier to see the whole retina when you've got, you don't have pupil in the way. And it makes it very difficult to regulate your eyes to light, so they'll, when you go outside, you have to wear sunglasses, et cetera, et cetera. And it makes it hard for the eye to focus because you've paralyzed those muscles. that stretch or contract the lens in the eye.

So now everything's blurry. And it usually just wears off after a while and then everything's fine. But the other drugs that do that, though, that cause my dryiasis. So pinpoint people's called myiosis and wide open pupils are called my dryasis. And I believe LSD is one of them. So let's look at drugs that cause. I think you're right. My dryiasis.

And let's see. Acropine, scopolamine, amphetamine, marijuana, all the things that caused your heart to beat fast and give you a dry mouth. We'll do that. And then lysurgic acid diethelamide. So there you go. Bingo. Yeah, I'll give myself a bell.

Give thyself a bell. But anyway. All right. So if your kid comes in and they have pinpoint pupils, they're doing lortabs or perkins. That's with their friends. And if they come in and they've got wide open pupils, then they're probably tripping balls. All right? Yes.

Okay. Yes. Excellent question. Great question. All right. All right. Come on now. Oh, boy.

Oh, boy. Hey, Dr. Steve. Just want to say, I love the show. Hey, thanks, man. Ask a quick question. Sure. My question is, what exactly is the deal? with intermittent fasting and insulin sensitivity.

I don't have any kind of diabetes or eating disorders and I'm of a healthy weight, but I'm just looking to improve my fitness and overall health. I'm interested in trying 16 to 8 intermittent fasting, where I don't eat for a 16-hour window and eat healthy food during the 8-hour window, specifically. That's my problem with intermittent fasting. I tried it, and I would not eat for 16 hours, and then I would just gorge. Gorge on shit for eight hours. It did not work for me.

Whenever I go online, I get all sorts of mixed results with some articles saying it'll increase insulin sensitivity and others saying it'll worsen your blood sugars and decrease insulin sensitivity. No, it depends on what you're eating during the non-fasting time, really. You know, losing weight, being physically active is always good for you. It helps lower your risk of obesity-related diseases. including diabetes, sleep apnea, stuff like that. Even it helps to reduce your risk of certain malignancies, too. And intermittent fasting may be more effective for reducing inflammation. And I'm not sure what the mechanism of that is.

And therefore, it could reduce your risk of things like Alzheimer's disease, certain arthritis, multiple sclerosis, stroke, stuff like that. Maybe. You know, the jury is still out on that. You know, it can cause hunger and fatigue, insomnia, and stuff like that, but that stuff's usually short-lived. And it's really, it's safe for most people, but it's really not the best way to, I mean, some people just go, well, I just skip breakfast and therefore I'm intermittent fasting. It's not really what this is what they're talking about. It's about having a true schedule so that your insulin levels are dropping, dropping, dropping. dropping, and then when you go back and start eating, that you're not just cramming a bunch

of carbs in your face like I do. You know, today, I went to the grocery store on the way back from a meeting that I had, and what did I do? The whole time I'm going, don't buy those rice cakes. Don't buy the rice cakes. Don't buy them. Don't buy them. Click right into the cart, came home and ate like six of them.

Oh, no. I don't know. I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot. He's a fucking idiot. I know. Truly, though, if rice cakes are your vice, you're okay. Yeah, well, okay, if I could just eat one.

Yes. You know, stupid lady diagnosis, she's like, well, I just go by and I open up the bag of potato chips. I just have one and I close it up and I'm fine. That's like. That's what I do. Go, shut up. I do. With chocolates and cake and pie and stuff, I'll take one bite of a piece of cake.

Put it in my mouth, I put it back in the refrigerator. It takes me a whole week to eat a piece of cake. That's good. It takes me a whole two minutes. What I have to do is stop buying this stuff. And then if I don't have it, then I'll eat fruit or whatever. That's what I need to do. I have got to do something.

You know, I did Noom, and I did great on that. And I just don't want to screw with it. I love Noom, though. Noom was awesome. But I am at, like, hovering between 177 and 1.8. and I see 200, you know, up in front of me if I don't do something. And I was at 200 at one point. I took a picture with my brother and my cousin at my sister-in-law's funeral, which is very sad.

And but I was the fat one. It's like, when did that happen? You look at it, and it's like two skinny guys and a big fatso. I'm sure that's not. No, I'll show you the picture. Yeah. And how long ago was this? Yesterday.

Oh, oh, goodness. Before yesterday. Yeah. Whoops. Yeah. Check, please. So anyway. Oh, man.

Yeah, I'm, I really need to embark on something like this and do, and I've just been, I go between, I don't give a shit, going, well, I'm just going to be fat, who cares? And then going, well, I really, yeah, I really don't want to get the. let this get away from me. So I've got to commit. Well, you and I both had a plan, and we both failed miserably this week. We did. So we're going to try it again this week. Okay, we need to set a reminder.

So what Scott's talking about was Tacey had an article last time about a vibrating capsule that you put in your stomach that stimulates certain hormones to be released from the stomach that induce satiety or the feeling of fullness. And Scott and I both have these vibrating. massage things. Massage guns. And people go, oh, yeah. No, these really are massage guns. You really can't use them to beat off and believe me, I tried. So it just doesn't work.

That's not what they're for. But you can direct the pulse any direction that you want. And we need to put it in under the zyphoid process and slightly up and slightly maybe slightly to the right and do it for a minute before we. We eat and see if that helps. Agreed. So I'm all in. I really want to do it.

I completely forgot about it. We're going to drink a glass of water first because we want the water to vibrate in the stomach. That's right. And that becomes a conductor for the sound waves. I think that's going to be really uncomfortable to do that gun because the pressure. I did it though. You just have to angle it down a little bit. And you can.

Yeah, you just don't hit it real hard. And you can turn it down too. Yeah, you don't have to push full more. Thank God for that massage. gun after work on Thursdays. I don't know. I don't know. You can take four hours of work a week.

It's unbelievable. It's terrible. It's really hard work. But don't hit you. I'm not going to hit you. I think I was going to get pushed. It's really hard work. I'm not kidding.

By the way, with, yeah, sure it is. So when you, if you're thinking of doing intermittent fasting, talk to your primary care, particularly if you have diabetes or. kidney stones. Those are the two big ones, just to make sure that they're on board with you. And speaking to kidney stones, do we have time for a quick question from the fluid family? No, what I was going to ask you next

is, do we have anything from the fluid family? Yeah, Don Phillips was asking, his father died of a heart attack, and he's got a question about eating healthy foods. Okay. But his concern is that he is prone to get calcium oxalate kidney stones. Okay.

And if we had any kind of dietary suggestions of what he can do because, you know, they tell you lots of dark, leafy, green vegetables, but many of them are high on oxalates. Yeah. So, you know, one of the misconceptions is about the calcium stones in kidneys is, is you would think you wouldn't want to eat anything with calcium because you would be afraid that you would get more calcium stones. It's really the oxalate.

That's the problem. Right. And then it binds to the calcium. So you're talking nuts, peanuts, peanuts, rhubarb spinach, wheat bran. And those are the things that you really want to avoid. In certain meats or, you know, high in protein meats can be can have some oxalates. But if you can eat foods with calcium,

the calcium will bind to the oxalate, you can, you know, kind of pee it out. Yeah. Your chance of developing kidney stones increases when you eat more sodium. Right. So, you know, for, you know, for, you know, calcium oxalates and those are the big things and you want to limit your animal

protein but make it lean so when you eat it you know limit animal protein beef chicken pork organ meats particularly eggs fish and shellfish I mean it kind of sucks you still need to make sure you get enough protein so

you want to you can eat beans lentils you know that kind of stuff I think tofu is in that you know learn to love tofu but Scott's 100% right you have to get enough calcium it's not the calcium

it's the problem it's the oxalate if he will email me I can get him a diet that's healthy that also helps prevent oxalate stones and a couple of things and staying super hydrated

just you've got to drink plenty of water so that your kidneys are functioning optimally and put them all out stones really are I mean it's precipitant what do you mean the reason that dilution with free water works is because these things are precipitance. And so if you ever took chemistry, you precipitated things out of solution before.

And so if you keep them in solution and makes them less likely to precipitate that and become solid. Yeah, so the more water, obviously, you have in your body, the better your kidneys function, and it'll help to wash those things out. Right. Anytime you get dehydrated, you lose the ability. And those things will start to lodge. And it's not just calcium oxalate kidney stones, but things like gout. Gout is another major, you know, pain in the ass.

And if you're sedentary, you know, if you don't move, if you don't exercise, you don't stay hydrated, you will get more gout. Now, if one thing that I would do, this was Don. Yeah, Don, yeah. Get your oxalate level checked. If it's elevated, there is a medication. out there called Lumazarin, sold as oxalumo, and it lowers the level of oxalate in adults that have primary hyperoxyl urea. In other words, people that are secreting too much oxalate into their urine.

Right. And so talk to a nephrologist about this if your primary care isn't aware of it, but you might be able to take some medication to reduce calcium stone formation. There are some people that are pushing alipurinol, which we use to prevent gout for calcium oxalate. But if Don will email me, and I don't care to give out my email address, it's just DR Steve 202 at gmail.com. And I'll send them some information on this because there's a lot to it when it comes to stone prevention. Yes. And it's not just diet, but that's a big part.

and it's not just hydration, but that's a big part. But there are some medications you might be able to take. They're coming up with some new medication too. That will allow you to liberalize your diet a little bit. Yeah. Okay. All right, you got any other ones from the family of fluids? No, sir.

No. Nothing interesting. Looks like Radish got one of his comments deleted, and I turned the chat box off. And Radish is one of the people that, you know, is always, you know, he doesn't say anything bad. Well, both of Don's questions were a legit question. not a single...

And they were both of them yet. Thankfully, I could read the deleted one. Oh, okay. But his, both his were blocked. He's like... Really? He's like, damn it. I can't even finish my question.

Let's see. Okay, look at Radish from 153. He's got a question. A skin thing. White stuff, if you can read it. White stuff, bulbs, pimples, and not infected. I heard it might be called talk or...

What? Sith. I don't know what the hell he's talking about. This must be a corn dish thing or... the reddish thing. Oh, oh, oh. Yeah, I have no idea what the hell he's talking about. I don't know either, but that's a secret language.

There are things that cause white bumps. Let's make it into a weird medicine question. On the penile glands, you know, there's several things that can cause white bumps on that. There's one called penile, pearly penile papules. And there's also penile hypercaratosis that looks sort of like a porcupine. And then there are four-dye spots, which are ectopic oil glands. And all of those things can cause white spots on the male membership. And speaking of white spots on the male membership, I'm doing a series of Ask Dr. Steve.

Things are about a minute to two minutes long for Dave Landau's normal world. So go subscribe to that on YouTube and hit that notification button. And hopefully I just did my first one. I've got a whole new green screen studio out there with a new camera that gives them the quality of video that they need. And I'm still dicking around with the settings on that thing. It's unbelievable. You can't just turn it on and start taking video. You know?

It's probably a good thing for you. I guess, but I mean, Sam, the cooking guy, they've got all the same cameras and they're just moving around, taking all this beautiful video. My stuff looks like shit. So I've got to figure it out, and it's going to drive me crazy. Doing it all by myself, going back and forth, back and forth to look through the camera, then sitting down and then going, you know, I need a producer up here. There's somebody that knows something about it that can help me with it. But, yeah, I've got a teleprompter and everything. I type up the scripts and then the teleprompomper.

Let's me look right into the camera. It's fun. It kind of reminds me of my old days in TV back in the 70s. Yeah, but I appreciate Dave doing that. They're actually, I'm going to be on the Eclipse episode, which is going to be April. The Eclipse is April 8th, if I remember correctly. And then we're going to tape on April 9th, and it'll be on April 9th at 11 p.m. And anyway, there you go.

Cool. All right? Any other questions from the fluid family? No, I love it was giving me a hard time. I might have missed one. Oh, you did? Okay. Well, we have like 10 seconds.

Day 16 and COVID, how long should this last? How long does COVID last typically as far as the sign symptoms? Oh, my goodness. How much you can feel? I mean, it could be days, weeks, months? No. I mean, really, it should be days. Yeah, it should be over.

Especially this version of COVID. Two to three days feeling crappy, and then you should get up. And then you, yeah, I had a cough and laryngitis for about two weeks afterwards. So have her email me and just tell me what her actual symptoms are at this point. Because, you know, there's symptoms and there's symptoms. She's still having fever. She needs to be seen by somebody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, Dr. Scott. Well, to end Tacey, let's get out of here. I want to say thanks to Dang Lizard for gifting five weird medicine memberships on YouTube. slash at Weird Medicine. And if you guys, you know, we don't push the membership thing. They're 99 cents, so it's like not going to break the bank. But if you do that and we get enough, you know, if we get to 50 members or something, we'll do a special members only thing.

I don't know that we'll ever get to 50. I mean, it's Cardiff and Tuky have thousands of members. But, you know, they do a different thing. I told Pat last night, we don't push the video element. This is a radio show, and we're doing it for radio, and then we have a podcast. But the live streams I do are obviously made for YouTube, but I suck at them, so I don't expect anybody to do anything with those. But anyway, all right, very good. Well, listen, thanks, Dr. Scott, thanks Tacey.

Thanks to everyone who's made this show happen over the years. Listen to our SiriusXM show, Faction Talk channel, SiriusXM, Channel 103. Saturdays at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern, but the best way to listen to it is on demand. And other times at Jim, of course, pleasure, if you just put it on on demand and just turn it off and then, you know, go do something else, that really helps us a lot over there. Many thanks for our listeners whose voicemails 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.

smoking, get off your asses, get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of weird medicine. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.