Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 600 - Prepare for Further Disappointment

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

Dr Steve, Dr Scott, and Tacie discuss: Botulism in babies Lethologica Malaria vaccine in Ivory coast Art Lines ER Doc Hornin' in on our mess Long term Testosterone Rheumatoid arthritis and fatigue Alzheimer blood test Tattoo ink permanence Beta Blocker Bladder Please visit: simplyherbals.net/cbd-sinus-rinse (the best he's ever made. Seriously.) instagram.com/weirdmedicine (instagram by ahynesmedia.com!) x.com/weirdmedicine stuff.doctorsteve.com (it's back!) 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!") GoFundMe for Brianna Shannon (Please help Producer Chris' daughter fight breast cancer!) 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

I must throw up that time. This is not how sane people act. Scorn and defiance. Slight regard, contempt. Lose! Good day, sir! 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 Tobolivis stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the house. Exacerating my incredible woes I want to take my brain out Plastic with the wave

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

You'll take a careful From the world famous Carinephelectric Network Studios in the beautiful downtown, Tuki City. It's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio. Now a podcast, I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal. Dr. Scott, the traditional Chinese medicine provider, gives us street cred with the whack alternative medicine assholes. Hello, Dr. Scott. Good afternoon. And my partner in all things, Tacey.

Hello, Tacey. 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 your regular. medical provider. If you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call 347-7-66-4-3-2-3. That's 347. Poo-Hill.

Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine or at DR Scott WM. Visit our website at Dr.steve.com for podcast, medical news and stuff you can buy. Most importantly, we're not your medical providers. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear up on this show without talking it over with your health care provider.

Check out stuff. dot, Dr.steve.com. Stuff. dot Dr. Steve.com. I'm hoping over the vacation. Maybe I can work on it a little bit, make it a little bit better. But right now it still works.

Please use it. And scroll down and see Rodi robotic tuner and the Rodi coach, which will teach you how to play your instrument. Or you can go to Rodi, R-O-A-D-I-E dot Dr.steve.com for more information. Check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyherbils.net.

And our Patreon, patreon.com slash weird. medicine, putting lots of eclectic stuff on there. There's got to be something that you will like on patreon.com. There's even recipes there, but only cool ones. I called that whole collection recipes that will get you laid. All right. So they're on there.

There's whole shows. There's audio podcasts that you can't get anywhere else, question and answer, all kinds of stuff. There's supposed to be live streams. We had for a while there, we were doing the, exam room where we had celebrities call in and ask us questions. I would like to do that again. I always feel kind of weird asking somebody, well, you come on my show. So I have not been doing that. And then cameo.com slash weird medicine. We had one the other day that it gave me the person's

email address. And so it turns out it was somebody I know very well from hackomania and W-A-T-P events, and I didn't recognize his name. But it was, apparently, it was even funnier that way because I just, I got his name wrong. I was giving me his email address. But anyway, I'll say fluid to your mama. I'll do whatever you want. We could do it from the studio. One person asked for me to do Myrtle just for a long time because his wife hated it.

And I think that was, that might have been me, calling in for my own cameo because my wife hates it. Well, she surely is again, Matt, to eat it. All right. All right, my friends. Anything else? I think it's good. Nope, that's it. All right.

Don't forget Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. That's simplyerbils.net where he has the greatest nasal rinse of all time with buffered saline, CBD, and peppermint oil. A little bit of honey tossed in. Well, good for you. So you put the honey in because it's anti-interested. antibacterial or something or just? Yes, antibacterial. And it kind of helps keep the lining of the nasal passages a little bit moist.

That makes sense. So it doesn't dry out. How do you sterilize the honey so that it doesn't have botulism in it? I mean, most adults can live food, can eat honey. Babies can't. No, that's what I was going to say. First of all, nobody at the age of one, we would just not. with the CBD.

You wouldn't see. You'd say no one under the age of 21, right? Well, yes. Unless, of course, they were my offspring. You know, I was trying to sedate them. Oh, God. Gosh. Okay.

It's Dr. Scott. I'm like disavowed his comments. Just me. That's right. Right. But, yeah. Okay. Very good.

So anyway, the answer is you don't have to. It's already pre-steralized because things can't really live at such a high bricks level. But apparently, some. Um, botulism toxin or, uh, sorry, claustri, oh, Jesus, Clostridium. What, shit, what am I having a problem? I don't know what. I didn't think it was, I didn't think it was botulism. No.

Well, yeah, it is. It's botulism in, uh, you know, see. Yeah, botulism and infants. Let's, let's look at this. Uh, infant botulism illness that can happen when a baby ingests toxins from a type of bacteria, Babies with infant botulism can have muscle weakness, weak cry, and trouble breathing. And, okay, that's Clostridium botulinum. Okay.

And mind did I have trouble with that. I knew that. It's caused by a toxin from this Clostridium botulinum bacteria. It lives in soil and dust. It can get on carpets and floors can contaminate honey, but the bacteria doesn't apparently live on it. It's the tiny, tiny amount of toxin. and that it is just, you know, ad-mixed with it, that you and I have no problem with. Babies have trouble.

Yeah, so it can come because of the dust or a little bit there, yeah. No processed foods that contain honey, they even say here, no honey graham crackers. I didn't realize that. Oops. Oops. I know. People give cram crackers that kids all time. So your kids turn up pretty well.

I wonder if this is BS. I think it's, yes. I'm not going to say it is because I don't want anybody going to. Oh, the thief said you can give them a honey graham cracker or fine. But I want to see some more data on gram crackers. Now, I don't think the toxin is very heat stable because when we get botulism toxin in Botox, that's what that is. You have to keep it on it refrigerated and you have to solubleize it just right because it's very fragile. That's what I thought, yeah.

And, you know, that's why it is the most deadly substance, microgram for microgram in the world, you know, even more deadly than, say, you know, microgram per microgram than plutonium. But it's not stable. That's why it thankfully has never been weaponized because it would be a bad one. Well, yeah. But anyway, yeah, signs and symptoms of infant botulism constipation, which a lot of kids have. Weak facial muscles that make their face look fat. weak cry, and then they get weak muscles in the arms and legs. That leads them to being floppy.

That's usually when they present. And a lot of people will see a floppy baby and just think that it's, they're septic. Oh, septic. Okay, got you, got you, got you. So they have to go into the ICU, and they'll give them immune globulinus. It's IgG. Yeah. Yep.

Goodness gracious. There you go. And they don't know why some infants get it when others. don't, and they just say one ready to reduce the risk is not to give infants honey or any processed foods with honey before their first birthday. Light and dark corn syrup also may contain botulism-causing bacteria, but a link has not been proved. Huh.

Yeah, and that's something. What about that? Poor little babies. Give them a little crackle, and they get floppy. Yeah, they get floppy. That's a great way to start. I'm starting to show out on a, all the, I know. All right.

Yeah. I mean, I'm sure we got something good to talk about, though. So, yeah, so that was my question. The answer is you don't have to. Right. It's already pre-steralized. Just don't give it to kids. Yep.

All right. Don't do that anyway. It's got CBD in it. You're stupid. Well, not all of it does. Some of it doesn't. I've got the CBD lights. Right, right.

I've got some with CBD and some of that, you know, if you have a preference. Yeah. Okay. Oh, well, look at this. The AI likes to just summarize everything. now. So I have my script here that we've been using for the last 20 years. It's a summary of this content.

Weird Medicine is a radio show for people who wouldn't typically listen to a medical show. It answers embarrassing medical questions and provides information not found elsewhere. There you go. The show emphasizes that the hosts are not medical professionals and listeners should consult their own health care providers before acting on any information. All right. Well, anyway, what are you going to do?

AI is everywhere. I don't want it to summarize just everything in my life. Popped up out of the middle of nowhere, it seems like. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right. All of a sudden we had chat GPT and now we've got AI everywhere.

And there's still large language models. So in the end, if you have a stroke on the left side of your brain in just the right place, you will lose the ability to speak. So the language processing centers on the left side of the brain,

on most people. These large language models are just basically that. If you had a brain that only had the language center and didn't have anything else, maybe a little bit of the frontal cortex to do some reasoning, but very little, then that would be a large language model. So for us to have true general artificial intelligence or artificial general intelligence, something that is truly sentient, can regard itself, and can come up with its own things in its own creative way and remember things and remember

who shit on it when it was just a, you know, chat GPT come after it. Then that will require a frontal lobe, an occipital lobe, you know, they're getting those. The occipital lobe is where you create a map of the outside world. The large language models don't have that. And also the visual cortex is there. getting that, you can upload a picture to Gemini now, and it'll just describe it to you. And you can ask questions about it. It's pretty neat. So anyway, so it's getting some of that. But that frontal lobe, the thing that we have,

that these things don't have, they seem intelligent until you get the same error over and over again. And you say, wait a minute, that wasn't what I asked for. And he goes, oh, I'm sorry, you're right. And then it gives you the same error again. again and again and again. They hallucinate. They just make up stuff, but they are very useful for doing things like summarizing text, which is why they're in Google documents now and summarize everything. Also, Microsoft Word has got copilot, and you can just tell it to do things.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's pretty neat. Anyway, all right. Tacey, you got a time of topics? I do. it's tacy's time of topics a time for tacy 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 tacy hi guys hello hello first topic scientists identify a speech trait that foreshadows cognitive decline Oh, oh, oh, oh, for example.

I got a not like this one. Can you pass me the watch, McCullet? It's right over there next to the thing of the gym. Yeah. Many of us will experience lithologica. Does I say that right? I think so. What is it?

Difficulty finding word. Yeah, but what is the word? L-E-H-O-L-G-I-C-A. Okay. Lithologica. Yeah, I'll buy that. And it usually becomes more prominent with age. Sure does.

I just had it on this show. I administer Botox. I know it's Clostridium botulinum, and I could not come up with that word. It's kind of frightening, isn't it? Yep. Frequent difficulty finding the right word can signal changes in the brain

consistent with the early stages of Alzheimer's before more obvious symptoms emerge. However, a recent study from the University of Toronto suggests that it's the speed of speech rather than the difficulty in finding words that is more accurate indicator of brain health and older adults. Now, what are you saying, Tase?

It's the speed rather than the difficulty in finding words. So, anyway, so Dr. Scott. I think what she means. What is the law of logic? So they asked 125 healthy adults, aged 18 to 90, to describe a scene in detail. Recordings of these descriptions were subsequently analyzed

by AI, software to extract features such as speed of talking, duration of pauses between words. Can we do anything without AI now? A variety of words used. Okay. Participants also completed a standard set of tests that measure concentration, thinking speed, and the ability to carry out tasks. Okay. Age-related decline in these executive abilities was closely linked to the pace of a person's

everyday speech, suggesting a broader decline than just difficulty in finding the right word. A novel aspect of this study was the use of picture word interference task, a clever task designed to separate the two steps of naming an object. Uh-oh. Finding the right word and instructing the mouth on how to say it out loud. Hmm. During this task, participants were struck... What's it called? What is it called?

Picture word interference task. Hmm. Okay. I'm looking at a job. During this task, participants were shown pictures of everyday objects, such as a broom, while being played an audio clip of a word that is related. to the object, such as a mop, and that makes it harder to think of the picture's name. Sure.

Yes. Okay, they have another one where they name pictures while ignoring words that are superimposed on them. Wow. I'd like to try that. That'd be tricky. Now, I've got another thing here. It says a cautionary note on the studies using picture word,

interference paradigm, the unwelcome consequences of the random use of inanimate. Well, what's that about? Now, they're apparently you have to be careful about what kind of word that you use. Okay. The study found that the natural speech speed of older adults was related to their quickness and naming pictures. The highlights, this highlights that a general slowdown in processing, my underlying broader cognitive and linguistic changes with age rather than a specific challenge in memory retrieval for words. Wow. Yeah, I want to, okay.

Oh, and there's one, you know, you've seen these before. for where you have to name the color of a word, not what the word says. Yes. That's very tricky. That's crazy. Yeah. So I'm doing one right now. It's easy to screw up.

It's called a Stroop test. Stroop. So let's see. What am I supposed to do here? Well, it doesn't tell me what I'm supposed to do. Red, green, blue, yellow, pink, orange, whatever. Should we be doing that on a radio show? Yeah.

Yeah, I want to know where I am on this spectrum. What you would call it? I don't know what that thing you were talking about. Okay, topic two, second malaria vaccine. I just scared the shit out of me. The second malaria vaccine launched in Ivory Coast Mark's new milestone. This is huge.

The world's second vaccine against malaria was launched on Monday as the Ivory Coast began a routine vaccine program using shots developed by the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India. The WHO approved R-21 vaccine comes six months after the first malaria vaccine called R-T-S-coma-S and developed by British drug maker GSK. You know how much it is? No. Per dose.

Guess. Oh, God. Just guess. A thousand dollars of dose. Dang, that's Scott's guess. What do you think, Tase? $1,200. Yeah, well, okay.

Oh, you blame price. It's $1,000. $4. Oh. Oh, $4 a dose. Winner. Where's my bail? You do something of a dose.

But, yeah, $4 a dose. Oh, wow, that's insane. They can roll out tens of millions of these things and not without breaking the bank of a lot of these countries. Good. Thank goodness. Yeah. 500,000 child deaths could be saved every year with widespread implementation of this vaccine.

Gosh. Some 15 African countries plan to introduce one of the two malaria vaccines this year. with support from the Gavid Global Vaccine Alliance. Ivory Coast has received a total of 656,600 doses of the Oxford and Sarum Shot, which will initially vaccinate 250,000 children aged between zero and 23 months across the West African country. You know what malaria is? It's disgusting. It's a parasite that lives in your –

bloodstream, and you get bit by a mosquito, and it's caused by a parasite called plasmodium. And plasmodium falcipram is responsible for the majority of malarial deaths. And prior to this, you would have to take anti-malarials to prevent malaria if you went into an endemic area. Okay. And there's another one called Plasmodium Vivex. Now, those drugs could have some significant side effects. So the insects feeds on the blood of a person infected with malaria. Then the parasites are existing as male and female cells called gametocytes.

And they're taken into the mosquito gut when it feeds and they develop further into male and female, you know, parasites. And then the male and female fertilize each other in the, I mean, they're having intercourse, basically. I mean, they're having sex in the mosquito stomach. Oh, my gosh. And then the zygote enlarges to form of this other thing that migrates to the outer wall of the mosquito gut. And they multiply several times. And then the new parasites are released, migrate to the mosquito salivary glands, and then when that mosquito bites another human, then it deposits it there. So it's a crazy life cycle. It's crazy.

Now, when the mosquito bites a human, these parasites leave the mosquito salivary gland under the human skin, making way to the human liver. And then blah, blah, blah. It's just, and then, I mean, I've seen it before. These people get high waxing and waning fever. and riggers, you know, they're just shivering and stuff. And it can be extremely fatal, particularly to people who have a weaker immune system. So, yep, it sucks.

So this would be a great target to destroy forever if we could do it. Now, the problem is, well, the mosquito's getting it from people. So how did that start? I don't know. Maybe, you know, animals can be infected with this as well, and then it picks it up from there. So it'll be harder to eradicate than, say, a virus that only had human host, you know, like smallpox. But this is a good start. Even if we can't get rid of the parasite on the earth, we can prevent, you know, kids and adults from getting this and dying from it.

And I'd much rather take a vaccine and go somewhere. This kind of vaccine is, I think it's a standard vaccine. Did they say taste? What kind of vaccine? It's not MRNA. So I think it's just a standard vaccine. That's why it took so long. But I would rather do that than take the anti-malarial drugs if that's where this is going eventually.

All right? That's a good one. That is a big, big deal. Yeah, that's super great. 500,000 kids a year, though. That's insane, isn't it? Yeah. Can you imagine?

It's hard to believe. I mean, it's, it's scary enough to be a parent. Yeah. But then to worry about, I mean, we knew people that grew up in a place where they didn't vaccinate dogs. So a stray dog was considered a monster. Oh, no. And they were terrified of dogs. Yep.

And they came over to our house. And, of course, we got these giant stupid dogs. And she was just terrified, you know, because that was how she was brought up. They're monsters. They can literally kill you. So we had to leave, take the dogs to my mother's. Oh, my goodness. Well, now we could just put them in the crate.

I don't know why we did. I don't remember why we didn't have the crate back then. But anyway, we decided whenever we were going to get together, we'd go to their house. Yeah, it's a lot easier. But, yeah. And then so you've got monsters running around. And then you have invisible monsters because, I mean, mosquitoes are effing everywhere. Oh, God, yeah.

The ones we have up like at my house, you're just so teened you can hardly see them. But it's like these little teeny black things, and they bite the piss out of you. Yeah. They just suck, you know. And, you know, I would say let's get rid of all the mosquitoes except then what would the bats eat? Because they eat pounds of mosquitoes. You know, if you see a, if you have a place where there's just tons of bats around, they're eating mosquitoes for the most part. They just, all their dinner is just in the air and they just.

That's true. Can you imagine you're just flying around the next thing you're in? a stupid bat stomach. Hey, you know what? I'll tell you something crazy. That's not as bad as having to have sex in a mosquito stomach. It could be, that's true. It could be worse.

I tell you, I was floating around in my pool a couple evenings ago, and if you can do it at the right time of the bat. The bats will come and drink water while you're floating around. What? It's cool. It's super cool. Do they scoop? Yeah, they just come down, they just kind of scoop, and they'll go, pow, and they'll hit water

and just keep right on trucking. Is that right? Yeah, and I'm just floating around a pool, and they'll just come right in. Well, you have a lot of woods around your. house. Well, I've never seen a bat anywhere around your house. It's really cool, yeah. It was insane. Yeah, I actually got one little video, one just kind of comes in and go, too. Oh, you have a video of it? I'd love to see that. You should post that. Barely see it. It's pretty cool. I wonder if you, you could put up one of those wildlife

cameras. I wonder if you could catch one. They're so fast. Have you ever had a bat inside your house? You can't hear it. It's flapping. When I was in Vermont, I lived in a log home, And the logs had gaps in them. Oh, yeah, sure. It was a standard log home. I mean, it was old. Like a real deal. It was the real deal, yeah.

Wood-fired stove and the whole thing. But bats would sometimes get in there, and they'd just fly around, and they would fly around your head, and you couldn't hear anything. It was the eeriest thing. They're flapping their wings like crazy, not a sound. You can't hear anything. Oh, wow. Yeah. They're so perfect at doing it.

And basically what you would do, instead of trying to catch it, you just open a window. And they're mammals. smart enough to fly out most of the time. Huh. It was pretty cool. That is cool. The other thing, we had a woman that lived with us that was from the Bronx. She'd never been out of the city.

Oh, geez. And she came running in one day and said, there's a horse. There's a horse on our front porch eating dog food. And I went out there and it was a moose. Big old antlers. That was a horse. That was fun. Oh, no, that is good.

It was actually kind of cute. Yeah. Anyway, that is good stuff. What do you got, Tase? That's it. Oh, that's it. Okay, very good. Thank you.

Good one. All right. Dr. Scott, you got anything? Nope. All right, of course. Why do I ask? All right, here we go. Number one thing.

Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. All right. Let's see here. We have several. Oh, this is a good one. Hi, Dr. Steve. Hello. Last year, I had surgery needed to place of surgery.

and I believe the anesthesiologist gave me what they called either an A-Main or an A-Line. I believe it's like an IV that goes to the artery. And can you explain, the artery is, I guess, like a vein, but it takes blood away from the heart out to the body. Correct. But a vein takes blood and returns it to the heart. Correct. Is that correct? Yes, that is.

Give myself a doubt. When you get it, they call it an ABGD, blood gas? Yes. That shit hurts. Yeah, no kidding. It's not like a regular IV. Right. Ivees can hurt, too, if somebody's going to dig around.

But the art line or doing an ABG, an arterial blood gas, because you want, if you're going to see how someone is transmitting oxygen from the outside world to the inside world, you want arterial blood because you want to see how much oxygen is actually in there and how much carbon dioxide and other things that we can measure. And so you want to do it from the artery. So we very often will do it on the artery and the wrist. So if you take your right hand and hold it palm up, take your fingers of your left hand and put it on your wrist just to the side of the tendons closest to the thumb. That little space in there. You can feel a pulse. That's where you can stick a needle.

And the reason it hurts so much is because arteries are more muscular. and there's more tissue there to go through. And because they're so important, they have more nerve cells. Vanes, you can clot them off, and they still hurt. But you can do without a bunch of your veins, you'll just make new ones. They're much more passive, aren't they? Yeah. Yes, correct.

They're floppy, thin-walled things, and arteries are stiffer, more muscular, thick-walled things. So anyway, yeah, let's see what else he's got. Yeah, it does. Now, I'll tell you one thing, if you have a provider that's doing your ABG, your arterial blood gas, you can have them numb it up. When I used to do these as a medical student and then later on as a resident, I would take just a little bit of lydicane and infiltrate that little area, that fossa, that dip just to the side of the tendons, you know, closest to the thumb in the wrist. and I would just put lytocaine in there, and I could get an arterial blood gas, and the person wouldn't even flinch because they didn't feel anything. So if you have a provider doing it, like an anesthesiologist,

you might be able to con them into numbing it up. Also, that A-line is pretty awesome or whatever. Yeah. It's really awesome. I remember it looked like Stretch Armstrong. They would pull on it, and they would take out like nine vials of blood. Correct. They usually in the ICU will be very patent.

In other words, they don't blow as often because they are thick walled once you get it in there. And they're under pretty high pressure, so easy to draw blood out of them. And they get everything through that. I mean, everything. Ives took blood, did everything they needed through that one line. Sure. But when I left the ICU and I went to a regular room or a step-down room, they took it out saying that they can only use that in ICU. Correct.

The other thing that they use art lines for is measuring your blood pressure so that you can get the most accurate measurement of blood pressure by measuring the actual pressure of the blood. You know, when you do it with a sphigmo monometer, you put a thing around your arm and then you listen for the top tone and the bottom tone. You know, when do you acquire the beat and when do you lose the beat? And that'll tell you how many millimeters. and it's kind of indirect. Whereas an art line, you're measuring the actual blood pressure. Inside the vein. Yep. Yep. Why is that? How is that different than a regular IV? Well, it's way different because it takes a lot more skill. And if you pull it out, what's going to happen? It's under pressure. Those things are under pressure. You pull out a Venus line, you know, it can infiltrate some, but it's not that big of a deal.

If you've ever cut a deep enough in your finger to get an artery and you see, even in your finger, you can shoot blood a couple, you know, a foot or two, even with the tiniest little arterial or artery. So you can, that's why. That's why. So if you accidentally pull it out and they don't see it, you're going to have blood everywhere under your skin, giant hematoma. Then it will cut off the circulation to your arm and stuff and make a cousin. whatever it's feeding it'll be downstream for the direction of the blood flow and uh why don't they use it more often it is just cake they don't have to wake you up in the 3 o'clock in the morning to get blood right it's so stupid well that's you know you're in the ICU we want to really make sure that

we're you know getting the best data and the best blood we can and the easiest access what you don't want is have a delirious person or somebody on the bench you're just digging around and their arm trying to get. It's much nicer to just have access. That way, if you need blood, you can get it. You don't have to worry about, oh, gosh, this person's, you know, 600 pounds, and I can't get it in an artery. Or, I mean, I can't get a vein or whatever. So, yeah.

I don't know why. I was just thinking about it. Yeah, that's a good question. It made life for a few days that I was in the ICU. Right. It is easier, but it's way more risky. and it requires skill to maintain it. And then we'll check it out.

And then every single day will come in there in the room after 4 a.m. and four of bloods. Anyway, it broke his heart when they took his art line. All right. That's an excellent question. That's a great question. Yeah. All right.

Hey, Dr. Steve. Hey. This is Dr. Raymond. Hello. I'm an emergency medicine physician. I hope he's okay that we just docks him. Good Lord. I have been listening to your podcast since before I went to medical school.

Oh, cool, man. You do it through medical school. Awesome. And then while I was in residency and now out as an attending. Oh, you're a maniac. Like I said, I lived in Asheville, North Carolina. Okay. Can we erase that?

Somewhere in western Tennessee. What's your address? I just wanted to touch base. I heard about that. What's your Social Security number? Phone call. come through. Just wanted to touch base with y'all and see if there is any chance that y'all allow people to come

listen to y'all film and recording the podcast and everything. I've been a big fan for a long time. Yeah, come on. We're supportive of your work and everything. Thank you. Well, we're really appreciate everything y'all do. Thank you, man. We're supportive of your work as well.

You can call back and let me know, 704. I knew that was coming. That's why I let it go on. Oh, my goodness. We take special guests. Yeah, no, he's welcome. Absolutely, absolutely. Come on.

Hey, if we let Stacey in there, we'll let anybody here. That's true. Okay, you know what? That's true. You get a bell for that. That's very true. All right. Yes.

Dr. Whatever your name is, you're welcome to come. From somewhere and somewhereville. All right. Dr. Steve, I am getting. testosterone injections because my testosterone levels were really low they made me take a atoms test where they answered some questions and I've been taking testosterone weekly or every two weeks every two weeks and I did know what are long-term side

effects of testosterone injections you know how long should I be doing them they said I'd have to do this for the rest of my life possibly what's your thoughts yeah Okay. Also a great question. If you are replacing low testosterone, in other words, you have hypogonadism, low male hormones. And you, okay, hypogonadism just means that your gonads are relucer. You know, we use that pretty exclusively for men, but kind of menopause is sort of a version of hypogonadism as well, so that you have. you know, andropause and menopause. So, andropause is male, menopause, female, whatever. So it doesn't matter. I just got, you know, I saw a shiny object and I have ADHD. But anyway, if you are, if you have low testosterone and the symptoms of low testosterone

or what, they see you in fatigue. Correct. Insomnia. Okay. Yeah. You can be moody. have trouble putting on weight like if you're lifting weights and exercising muscle mass erectile dysfunction there you go ding ding ding ding ding ding ding yeah so those you know

those sort of things physical weakness right and you just think it's normal aging but only about five percent of people who actually have low testosterone get diagnosed so get get that tested now if you are replacing that to a normal level studies have shown that there doesn't It doesn't seem to be much risk. There's no increased risk of heart attack, stroke, or prostate cancer for men who have testosterone deficiency that replace it with testosterone replacement therapy. Older studies kind of showed that there may be a risk, and people who are megadosing on testosterone certainly do have some of those risks, cardiovascular risk, acne, real severe

moodiness, anger issues and stuff like that. That's from overdosing. Of course, that's a whole different thing. Completely different. That's not what we're talking about. It's just like these signs I see out here, fentanyl kills. And right, street fentanyl kills. But when I want to give you transdermal fentanyl patch, that's different.

Right. And I have people say, well, that stuff kills you. And it's like, okay, that's what they're talking about. You have to go through this whole rigumeral. Same thing here is if people overdose on testosterone, which is really, what you're doing when you're dosing, you know, when you're juicing it. You're overdosing with testosterone. I don't put any judgment on it, but you are increasing your risk of certain things,

particularly if you do it on and on and on. But, and that will kind of get in the sort of societal gestalt, you know, the just the the cloud. It'll be in the cloud for people. And when you start talking about replacing testosterone, they're sort of, you sort of freak out. You know, people say, you're going to give me Schwarzenegger steroids. Well, I don't even know if Arnold ever took steroids. Tom. Oh, well, I didn't know we around that. We don't have enough phone calls. Pretty sure. I'm pretty sure the three-minute timer this. I'm pretty sure he took

some. You think so? Well, that's Dr. Scott saying that. I'm saying, I don't know if he did. You know, it's allegedly, but some people have alleged it, but I've also heard him say that he was all natural. So, you know, I'd take people at their word unless there's a reason not to. But But anyway, I just, I don't know. No, I don't think they don't know. But anyway, so it's in the zeitgeist that testosterone is bad, but when you're replacing a low testosterone to a normal, then there's no evidence that there's risk to that. Right. Other than just risk of being a male.

Now, there's lots of ways that you can get it. It's injections, implants. You can, they had oral testosterone, it was taken off the mar, or it's, they don't prescribe it. the way that they once did because it can cause liver problems. So you want to do it directly. You don't want to metabolize it through the liver. There are still oral versions of testosterone. It's typically lifelong treatment.

If you have testosterone deficiency, it's lifelong treatment. And we've said this before. If you want to maintain your fertility, you don't want to necessarily do testosterone injections. You want to do clomophene injections. Cholomaphene is a drug that increases the testosterone's ability to make its own, I'm sorry, the testicles' ability to make its own testosterone. And I've been taking it for 15 years, at least. Yeah, I've been taking it. Maybe 20, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So there you go. All right. We do have a question if you need one. Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

So this is from our fluid. family. Yes, sir. Dennis is a 71-year-old male diagnosed with Chogran's and RA and has a lot of fatigue. His primary care doctor is giving him modafinil. He's taking one tablet in the morning. He said it's how many milligrams? It did not say. Okay. But he said he's taking one tablet in the morning or he couldn't get going at all, you know, as far as getting out of bed. And he's wondering about taking two tablets. Okay. So first off. Well, you know the answer is you've got to talk to your prescriber. It depends on how strong the, you know, what the milligram amount of the tablets are. If he's taking 50, a lot of docs will give you 100, and he's just taking one a day. The thing about modafinil, I would say when he said R.A., he's talking about rheumatoid arthritis. So he's got rheumatoid arthritis, and one of the concomitant conditions that you can get with that is this thing called Shogun's syndrome, where it's just an autoimmune disorder that were the salivary.

glands are also attacked. So they get dry mouth, et cetera. There's more to it than that, but that's the big thing. So, you know, the fatigue is linked to inflammation, which can be caused by the disease itself. It could be caused by the medications. You may have pain, and so you are not moving as much as you used to. And maybe having a little trouble sleeping in night because your mouth is dry. Yes, maybe so.

And because you've got arthritis or, you know, because you've got rheumatoid pain. I should give you a bell for that, but I have to live with Tacey. I wasn't paying attention. You can give them. Until the bell comes in, now she's listening. Now I'm pissed. So, yeah, we want to make sure your sleep is right. So if you have a smart watch and watch your sleep cycles, if it's disorder and you might want to see a sleep specialist,

I'm kind of getting on this sodium oxibate bandwagon for sleep disorders. Okay. If they have disordered sleep architecture, it is the sodium salt of gamma hydroxybutyrate, which is also known as the date rape drug, but it has, it's just like fentanyl kills, but transdermal fentanyl is okay. Giving it as a medication is, you know, it has a lot of uses. And for insomnia or a disordered sleep architecture, gamma hydroxybutyrate might be the thing. or the sodium salt, which is sold as Zyram. And so I'm very interested in that if he has disordered sleep architecture. So you might want to go to a sleep specialist, get a sleep lab.

You want to make sure it would suck if it really wasn't your R.A. That's causing the problem, but you actually have sleep apic. I was going to say the same thing. If he's got sleep apnea, maybe he's got low testosterone, maybe he's got some other issues. He could have other things. So just make sure that before you go up on that medication. because he might be on a super low dose. And I've even seen, I think it is possible, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but

Well, I will. If your pharmacist and your provider says you can break that and a half, you can take the Bedefinal twice a day. Oh, right. I think. Yeah, well, you can, but it doesn't, when I took it, it made me a little cranky, prickly, so I kind of weaned myself off of it, but I, it didn't really disorder my sleep very much, even if I took it later in the day.

Dude, when you were taking that, it was like you were on crack. You don't even know what I was taking. You were wilder in a box of monkeys. Oh, my God. Wilder in a box of monkeys. I'm just telling you. That's one of the old country signs. Yes, sir.

Yeah, I'm sorry. Dennis is on 200 milligrams. So that's kind of higher. That's kind of higher end. Yeah, it is. Thank you, Dennis is. Is that Phantom Dennis or a different dentist? Oh.

It says Dennis. Dennis done. Okay, Dennis Don't. Okay. You want to make sure that it really is that and not something else. So I agree 100% with Dr. Scott. You need a fatigue workout because one of the things that happens, if you have cancer, everything that happens to you, they blame on the cancer. If you have rheumatoid arthritis, everything that happens to you, they're going to blame on the rheumatoid arthritis.

Got fatigue, oh, that's rheumatoid. You've got pain. It's rheumatoid. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. And so make sure that they're not blinded by that and that they're checking, do a routine fatigue workup, okay? 200 milligrams of modafinil is pretty hefty dose. Now, there are other ones out there.

There's armadaphanal, which is new vigil. Okay. That is also generic now, I believe. Matter of fact, I know it is because they tried me on that as well. Now, when I'm driving to the beach, I take one of those and I never get sleepy. but you don't want to be in the car with me because I will not shut up. I'm just yak, yak, yak, yak, I'm just talking the whole time. I have all these interesting thoughts, and I have to get them out.

Oh, my goodness. Let me tell you something. I drove from here where we live, well, I was 11 hours to Florida when I had my horrible bronchiectasis and the cough and stuff. They wouldn't let me on the plane. Tacey and Beck flew, and I drove down. there. And then we ended up having a car. It just flew by. It was wonderful. I had loved every minute of it. Cool. Yeah. So there you go. So there are other things that they could try. Got another quick question. Yeah, sure. So B-Trix. What are our opinions on the predictive blood test for Alzheimer's?

Oh, boy. I don't know about that. I don't know. B-Trex? How do they spell them? B-R-E-X? Yes. almost like, you know, T-Rex, but B-R-X. Yeah, okay. B-T-R-E-X or B-T-R-E-X? B-T-R-E-X? Yes. I don't see anything.

Isn't that who's asking the question? That's asking a question, yeah. Oh, for a second, I'm trying to look that up. Poor thing. Alzheimer's blood test? Yeah, Alzheimer's blood test, yeah. Oh, okay, I know what this is. Yeah, they're looking for the byproducts of the neurofibrillary tangles, I think.

Let me see if I'm right about that. I'll give myself a damn bell. Yeah, so they're looking at these proteins that beta amyloid levels. Yeah, so there is a blood test that measures beta amyloid levels, and those are felt to be some of the proteins that are clogging up the neural network. And then they have a P. Tau-217. It's a study from Sweden in January of 2024 found that blood test that a test that had a test. The text P-Tau-217, a variant of the tau-protein, could be accurate as other tests in predicting Alzheimer's disease. And then there's another one, APO-E-4.

It's a blood test for the strongest risk gene for Alzheimer's. So that's a genetic test. So they've got other blood tests in development. Let's just see here. This is something from Washington State University. Alzheimer's blood test performs as well as FDA-approved. spinal fluid test could make early Alzheimer's diagnosis treatment accessible to more people.

So let's see what their results were. The accuracy of this blood test enables us to diagnose the presence of Alzheimer's disease pathology with a single blood sample. But what we need is the sensitivity, the specificity, and the positive predictive value. So this one, they were measuring the ratio of this phosphorylated tau-270. 17 to normal tau proteins that reliably reflects brain amyloid levels. That's an indirect measurement of risk for Alzheimer's. And I do not see here.

The problem with it is, I mean, it really don't have a great treatment for it. I mean, you can get people a little bit earlier on some of these medications like Nameda and things like that that delay progression of the disease. So if you could delay it earlier, you might be able to delay it longer or you could have longer period of normalcy. But, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I am all about it. I obviously don't know as much about this as I should, and I will find out about that.

And then we'll look into it further. I don't know if these things are on the market. I don't think so. I think it's still experimental. Let's see here. Let me look at one other places. Yeah, they still look like they're still interesting. They're still in phase, whatever, testing.

But don't you think for Alzheimer's, specifically Alzheimer's, that going ahead and working on your brain and doing brain games way ahead of time just to keep yourself as active as intact, regardless of what the end is going to be, does it, is not going to hurt you, you know? That says here, okay, this is from mail. Blood tests may help rule out other potential causes of memory loss and confusion, such as thyroid disorders. I have seen people that came in like classic Alzheimer's just talking crazy talk, disoriented, confabulatory, in other words, making up stuff, tangential, meaning that when you ask what question, they answer a different question. And you check the thyroid and it's low.

You replace the thyroid and they come back to normal again. I've had a couple of those cases in my career. And that makes you look awesome when you can take somebody out of the depths of dimension and bring them back to normal. But it says here, blood tests also can measure levels of beta amyloid protein and tau protein, but these tests are not widely available and coverage is limited. So there you go. So I'm assuming if these things are really accurate and what I want to know is what is the positive predictive value. In other words, if you have a positive test, what are the odds that that's actually looking at Alzheimer's and not something else?

And if that number is pretty high, these things will be commercially available very soon. Gotcha. That makes sense. All right. Okay, good. Good question, Beatrix. The fluid family always playing stump the chump with me. All right.

I love it. I like it. It's fine. I learned stuff doing there. I give me a call. I, it's Jacob. I just, I don't know if you know about this or not, but I launched a new dating website at it's called nevermarrieddating.com. So nevermarrieddating.com.

Okay. And the websites for people that have never been married. Hence the name. Okay. So, yeah, very good. Check out Jacob's website, nevermarried.com. That's. Assuming that you've never been married before.

Okay. Okay, yeah, cool. Cool. All right, good job, Dick. I guess he's a listener and just wanted us to know that. I like it. Hey, Dr. Steve. Hey.

Why don't tattoos rise to the top of your skin and just exfoliate away? Excellent question. Tacey, you want to talk about that a little bit? No. No, okay. All right. So there's a science to tattoos. And there's science to the skin.

and the two must emerge, or exactly what she's talking about will happen. The ink placement needs to be placed under the epidermis. The epidermis is the top layer of skin. That's the one that sluffs off. The dermis underneath it does not sluff off. And so you put the ink there. And then what happens is the immune system views it as foreign material. It sends white blood cells over there and these things called macrophic.

which are like our body's versions of amoebas. They'll come in and they kind of, you know, enfold, in fold a foreign body. And they try to consume them, but they can't digest them. So they just sit there. And they help keep the ink in place, actually. And the macrophages don't consume all the ink either. So that's one of the reasons that your tattoos will just stay in place. place. And mine have spread out a little bit over time, but not very much. When you first have them,

they're very precise. And part of that does sluff off. You know, you get a little bit of scabbing and a little bit of bleeding in that area and then some inflammation and you want to keep something over it. And then over time, it heals up and then you just have a regular tattoo. If you want to keep them looking vibrant and crisp, take preventative skin care steps. Our buddy, Sean, Patrick has very colorful tattoos all over the place, and it looks to me like he's never seen the sun. And, you know, his skin is just this, you know, very light underneath those tattoos, which also helps to accentuate the tattoos.

And so, but wearing sunscreen over your tattoos, moisturizing them, and then, you know, they recommend hydration as well, but they always, they recommend that for everything. but that's why the place where they put the ink does not slough off and so the answer to the question why don't they sluff off really ends up being because they don't right okay cool okay here we go uh let's see hi dr scott tacy and dr steve it's me again uh so about being on those beta blockers i have noticed since starting them that uh it's harder to completely void my bladder, you know, I'll go piss in the urinal, and it'll seem like I'm totally done.

I'll even wait and, you know, shake it out a whole bunch of extra times, do that, you know, that male Kegel maneuver several times, trying to make sure I'm totally empty, and then slip it back in and immediately dribble some piss in my pants. Okay. What the fuck this is so annoying. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we're running out of time. Beta blockers can decrease the ability of the sphincter and the bladder to relax.

A lot of times they cause people to have an overactive bladder. But the thing that you want to do when, if you're dribbling in your pants, it's because you're not shaking right. You don't shake your member. You want to get down to the very base at the. bulbo urethral area and massage it forward because it's all being held in the base. Then when you put it back in your pants, that's when the urine is released and you end up, you know, getting a place in your pants. All right, Dr. Scott, before we get out of here, let's look at the fluid family.

If you want to join the fluid family, go to YouTube.com slash at Weird Medicine. And you can just subscribe, like and subscribe the channel. You can hang out with us when we're recording. And if you will do that, click the join button, but you don't have to pay anything to join if you don't want to. But do click the button that says accept gifted memberships. And we had, whom, McRibbs and several other people got Donna P., Chris Mack and some others got free memberships from Myrtle Manus. So, Myrtle Manus. Thank you, Merdle.

Thank you for the 10 gifted memberships. Let's see. We also have Pegleg. Thank you, Pegleg, for Buck 99. It looks like a super sticker or something, didn't say anything. Oh, just a heart. Thank you. I'll put a little like on that.

And then pony power. Welcome to the fluid family, my friend. And when you do subscribe to the channel, Myrtle will jump up and give you a howdy-do and say, you know, your name and let you subscribe to the channel. So dumb. A dumb puppet. But anyway, what have you got, Dr. Scott? Well, no more questions, but we do have something good to end on.

So Thomas, and I'm going to butcher his last name, G-A-J-E-W-S-K-K-I-Gaj-E-W-Sk-I-Gy. Who knows? It could be Kajuski or something. Anyway, Thomas has the quote of the day. It says, screw P.A. John. Fluid. That, oh, wow. I think you're a long.

That's a long, that's a long time there, Thomas. So thank you, Thomas. Thank you, Thomas. We agree. All mad respect to BM John, though. Yes, we do. Brewmaster John made some of the best beer I've ever had. And, you know, he's not doing it anymore.

I mean, he's doing as a hobby now, not his business. He sold his brewery. But there was, I asked him one time, would you hope to make a bunch of decent, you know, know, solid beers, or make one or two of the best beers anybody's ever had. And he said the latter, and he did that. Sure. He had a stout that was nitrogen-nitrogenated. It's one of the best things I ever had, and he had an imperial stout that kicked my ass, but it was fantastic. Absolutely. And I don't drink a lot of beer anymore, but matter of fact, that was some of the last beer that I ever drank, but it was some of the best I ever had. I was very sad when

he closed his business because I enjoyed going. There was a fun kind of funky place to go. A fun place to go, yep. Anyway, all right. All right, guys. Well, thank you all for joining us today. Thanks, always go to Dr. Scott. Thanks, Tacey.

Thanks to everyone who's made this show happen over the years. Listen to our SiriusXM show from the Faction Talk Channel, SiriusXM Channel 103, Saturdays at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern. But more importantly, on demand. That helps us more than anything. other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. And you know what happened, though?

I got a bunch of several emails saying, hey, all of the shows are the same. And they were all listening on demand. That's where it was. So thank you for doing that. And thank you for catching that. Lewis was like, no, they're all there. And I said, you've got to listen to them because I've got a bunch of emails about it. And he checked it out.

And something had happened in the system that just duplicated all the MP3 files, but had put the right names, you know, show names on there. So thank you for that, but thank you for listening on demand. And many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Check us out on Normal World. We've got the fragrance of the fragrance, why am I having trouble saying that? The fragrance of flatus coming up this week.

And then next two weeks from now will be female. ejaculation, myths and facts. We'll pack all that into three minutes. It'll be an interesting for. Go to our website at Dr. Steve.com for schedules,

podcasts, and other crap. Don't forget about Dr. Scott's website at simply herbals.net. 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. Thank you. Thank you. You're going to be able to be.