Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 622 - Influenza and the End of an Era

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Dr Steve discusses: RIP Brooklyn Blowhard leave a message to his family here Influenza A again testosterone and testicle size new non-opioid pain medication (suzetrigine) cannabis and pain control taurine and colon cancer and more Please visit: simplyherbals.net/cbd-sinus-rinse (the best he's ever made. Seriously.) instagram.com/weirdmedicine x.com/weirdmedicine stuff.doctorsteve.com (it's back!) youtube.com/@weirdmedicine (click JOIN and ACCEPT GIFTED MEMBERSHIPS. Join the "Fluid Family" for live recordings!) youtube.com/@normalworld (Check out Dave and crew, and occasionally see your old pal!) Watch for our new channel "Stitts on Gaming" coming soon! You can play along with us at Megabonanza.com! An actual legit site, never had an issue redeeming "sweepstakes coins" (i.e., real money) We also play at STAKE.US! Get free stuff (crypto site, let me know if you need help getting set up!) Try mining any major crypto on ANY device! Join the largest mining ecosystem: you only need the right tools to get a stable income! Check out the full product line Do you love coffee? Jeremy can be a nut sometimes, but his coffee is serious business and seriously great Visit Coffee Brand Coffee from HERE and get a discount on small-batch roasted coffee beans, grinds, and K-cups CHECK OUT THE ROADIE COACH stringed instrument trainer! roadie.doctorsteve.com (the greatest gift for a guitarist or bassist! The robotic tuner!) see it here: stuff.doctorsteve.com/#roadie Also don't forget: Cameo.com/weirdmedicine (Book your old pal right now because he's cheap! "FLUID!") Most importantly! CHECK US OUT ON PATREON!  ALL NEW CONTENT! Robert Kelly, Mark Normand, 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

A massage chair might seem a bit extravagant, especially these days. Eight different settings, adjustable intensity, plus it's heated, and it just feels so good. Yes, a massage chair might seem a bit extravagant, but when it can come with a car, suddenly it seems quite practical. The all-new 2025 Volkswagen Tiguane, packed with premium features like available massaging front seats, It only feels extravagant. At Sierra, you'll always find apparel footwear and gear for 20 to 60% less than department and specialty store prices.

But right now, it's clearance time. So you can save even more on everything you need to get active and outside. Visit your local Sierra store today. Make your next vacation unforgettable. On Royal Caribbean's newest ship, Star of the Seas. It's everything you've loved about every family vacation you've ever been on, with mind-blowing thrills. the largest water park at sea, seven onboard pools for every level of chill, more than

40 ways to dine and drink, and even more to enjoy at our award-winning private island, perfect day at Cocoa. This is the new Star of the Seas. Click or tap the banner to find out more. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. See, that's the things that are coming out of your mouth, child. Babbling, insanity, delusions. You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir. 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 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 Tobolivide stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heart valve, exacerbating my impetable woes. I want to take my brain out, plaster with the wave,

an ultrasonic, agographic, and a pulsating shave. I want a magic pill. All my ailments, the health equivalent of Citizen Kane. 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 Beijing, Dr. Steve. From the world famous Cardiff Electric Network Studios in beautiful downtown Tuky City, it's weird medicine, the first and still only on censored medical show.

In the history of broadcast radio, now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal. Well, me, I guess I'm my own little pal today. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. You have a question you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider. If you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a couple. all 347, 766433, 23, that's 347, poohead. 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, stuff you can buy. Most importantly, we're not your medical providers. Take everything here with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking over with your health care provider. Yeah, I got influenza. so I'm doing the best again. Sorry, everybody. Good Lord. I don't wish this on my worst enemy. Check out rowdy, r-o-a-d-I-E dot Dr. Steve.com for the Rodey Robotic Tuner. Check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyherbils.net. And patreon.com has been quite a bit more active lately.

So patreon.com slash weird medicine playing old, old archive. stuff that hopefully will be there forever. Can't hear that anywhere else because everything below 300. I was considered too risque for regular podcast. But anyway, but it's all up

there. And more coming out every day. And if you want me to say fluid to your mama, check out camio.com slash weird medicine. More people have been doing that lately. I appreciate it. It's very inexpensive. I charge the least they'll let me, which is $5. I just like doing it. So check out cameo.com

slash weird medicine. Very good. Check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. That's simply herbals.net. And check me out on Normal World with Dave Landau. I just did one on Asplay. Ask Dr. Steve. And I do these three-minute videos. And this one was deemed so extreme that they couldn't run it.

So it had to be edited. And the more horrifying and arguably much, much funnier version will be played live at Hackamania, May 9th through 11th in Las Vegas. Go to hackomania.com. Use promo code weird. Get 10% off on your tickets. Sorry I wasn't around last week. I thought I had whooping cough. Turned out I had influenza A and it sucked.

God, I've had influenza before and it sucked but really only for a day or two. And I'm a weekend and I'm supposed to go to work tomorrow. We'll see. I think I'm going to be able to make it. But, yeah, that was an MF and had the flu vaccine and the whole thing. And people are you're vaccinated. It's like, okay, we're not shitting on every vaccine, okay. For F's sake, rabies vaccine is a great vaccine.

And without that, stray dogs or monster. I remember when I was a kid, before the rabies vaccine came out, they would run these commercials about stray dogs and people who weren't careful and got rabies and they would just show strobe lights and people foaming at the mouth. And so it was awful. And actually, one of my teachers had a friend who was a missionary in India got bit by a rabid dog and died. So, yeah, rabies vaccine is good. measles vaccine is good, demonstrably good. And I hear people say, well, oh, there's more harm done by the vaccine now than there is from measles. It's like, yeah, because we're fully vaccinated.

So anytime you have a vaccine that's nearly as close to perfect as you can get it, to where there are no cases or very few cases because a few knuckleheads decide that they're going to chance it. And then, of course, the adverse effects from the vaccine are going to outweigh any damage that's done by the virus itself. But let me remind you that one in a thousand kids who get measles will succumb. and I had my kindergarten friend died of measles before the measles vaccine came out.

That's how old I am. So I'm looking up efficacy of influenza vaccine 24, 40 to 60 percent. And so you go, well, why isn't it any better than that? Well, it's because they have to guess. One year, it was only 6%. That's the year I got it so bad. But the thing is, is that even if it misses, as it did for me, I was vaccinated for influenza A, but I got it anyway, it reduces hospitalizations and deaths. So, you know, the thing is, is that they have to guess from the Southern Hemisphere during our summer.

There's flu floating around in the southern hemisphere, and they go, okay, well, it looks like this is what's going to hit us next year. And if they guess really well, then you have a really good flu vaccine that year. If they miss the mark because these stupid viruses will mutate, then it's not so great. And that illustrates why we need a universal influenza vaccine. But anyway, you know, there's two types of influenza virus A and B. A is kind of the shitty one. And it, but even if the vaccine isn't 100% effective, which it almost never is, it still provide significant protection against flu, reducing the severity of illness and the risk of complications, which is what we really care about. But anyway, we had one of our listeners who was an anti-flu vaccine person saying, oh, the flu is no big deal.

Barry the Blade, if you remember him, he passed away during the swine flu epidemic. And we had another friend, R.D. Richard David Smith, who, God, I hope I got your name right. I'm sorry, and his wife, Shatai. They are the owners of hyperphysics, H-Y-P-E-R-F-I-Z-I-C-S. I hope they're still in business because it was the best energy drink ever made. It's an energy drink for nerds. But he almost passed away. He ended up on the ventilator.

And he is now quite the vaccine proponent. So, thankfully, he survived. So, anyway, yeah, so this sucked and, you know, it was just crappelicious. And I got the fancy one for old people, too, you know, the double-strength version. So, God, I don't know what this would have done to me if I hadn't had it. Maybe I would have been fine. There's no way to run it back. But anyway, so, yeah, that's why I haven't been around.

And I appreciate Lewis Johnson. Serious X-M covering for me this whole time and making sure that shows were up and everything. So, anywho, yeah, so flew bad. But, yeah, check out the Normal World episode. It just came out, and I don't know what number it was, but it was about ass play. And we've discussed as one of the first things that we ever discussed on the show was if you have receptive anal intercourse, whether you're male or female, do, does that put you at risk for rectal incontinence? In other words, are you just going to be dropping logs while you're walking around? and hence some of the images I use that were not okay for a broadcast on Blaze TV.

But so Sam Farr, who is the producer who puts all the stuff together, sort of modified the images. And like I said, they were more acceptable, but definitely not as funny. But yeah, so the answer is, if you want it, spoiler alert, They used monometers, which are balloons with pressure gauges on them. You shove them up somebody's rear end and you have them squeezed down doing a cagle maneuver. And you determine how much pressure they can exert keeping the sphincter closed. And then you have them go do receptive anal intercourse.

and you do it, you know, several times, and then you come back and you shove the monometer up there and you see whether there's a difference in the amount of pressure that they can apply. And it turns out that there is. There's a statistically significant decrease in rectal tone in people who have regular receptive anal intercourse, but it's not enough of a decrease

to induce incontinence. In other words, there's plenty of redundancy there, which is good. It's almost as if we were designed to be able to engage in ass play. And because when you're, the reason that we have rectal continents isn't just because, you know, turds are gross. It was because if we were walking around in the savannah, it was a lot easier for Sabretooth Tiger to track us if we were just dropping turds everywhere when we were walking uncontrollably.

So the fact that we could control it and defecate in one place and then get away from there real quick, the Sabretooth Tiger might be able to stalk that area if we were dumb enough to go there too many times, but it couldn't just track us around. And it actually became a survival advantage. And the creatures back then who were our ancestors who had the tighter sphincters lived longer or more of them lived to transmit their genes to the next generation of tight asses. So there you go. So pretty interesting.

But that was the one that we did for Normal World Check it out. All right. Very good. Don't forget to check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. Still time for CBD nasal spray, and I use mine every day. It really does help. It helped a lot to soothe my nose while I was having all these issues with influenza. Okay, well, I've got a couple of interesting articles that I wanted to share with you.

And this one is very exciting. We've been talking about this kind of crap since day one of weird medicine back in 2000, whatever, 2007, 2005, whenever we started. And this is a new class of pain killers, non-opioid pain medication, which they are saying, and this may be hyperbole, so we'll have to see that this heralds in a new era in pain management. will, by God, see. But this is the first new painkiller class approved by the FDA the first time, I mean, in the last 20 years. So this drug is called Suzetrogen. It's a novel non-opioid medication for short-term, moderate to severe pain relief. The reason it's short term is because they haven't studied it long term yet.

That's really the only reason why. It may not be safe long-term. There are some medications that we have that are not safe long term. One of those is Catorillac. Cotorillac is also sold under the brand name Toridol, and it is just as potent as some of the lower dose oxycodone preparations. And so when you've got a sprained ankle or something or you've got a broken or you just came out of surgery, every once in a while they will use toridol. instead of an opioid so that people can stay alert as long as there are no contraindications. And it works really, really well.

I've got some patients with kidney stones that swear it's better than getting, say, a half milligram of dilaudit or something. The problem with it is is if you give it more than five days, you run the risk of actually literally killing your kidney. So we don't recommend that you take Toridol for a long period of time. than five days. All right. So they'll approve these things short term, and then if they're proven safe through post-marketing or phase four studies, then they may approve it for long-term use. So it says unlike traditional opioids, which act on brain receptors and lead to addiction,

Suzetrogen works through a different mechanism. It targets a specific sodium channel. This is cool stuff. In the peripheral nervous system, preventing pain signals from reaching the brain. So it doesn't even go through the blood brain barrier, apparently. It just stops pain signals from being transmitted from the source of the pain to the brain

where it's actually perceived. And it offers effective relief without the euphoric effects. Ooh, boo. That's a boo. That lead to opioid dependence. It's not the euphoric effects that lead to opioid dependence. It's a stimulation of the mu opioid receptor and upregulation of SAME that results in the, you know, the condition we call addiction. But, okay, so, you know, people will seek these things out.

because they cause euphoria, but ketamine causes euphoria, but it does not cause addiction. You can overdose on it. You can bad things can happen, but it doesn't cause an addiction syndrome, so it's not just the euphoria. But that is why people seek it out, and then the fact that you get this upregulation. In other words, you're blocking, you're attaching to these. receptors and the body's making more of them. And that's where the addiction appears to come from. Because you've got more and more and more of these receptors that are seeking to be stimulated.

Anywho, it also causes tolerance. By tolerance, I mean that the patient will require more and more drug to get the same effect. So in phase three trials, the Suzetradine demonstrated its ability to reduce pain effectively in patients recovering from surgeries, like abdominoplasty. They say tummy tuck in here. I refuse to use the word. Abdominoplasti and bunionectomies. So why they say tummy tuck, which is a, you know, just sort of a vernacular, and then say bunynecumptomies. and then say bunionectomy, which is the correct term for removing a bunion in the foot.

But anyway, patients treated with the suzetrogen reported pain relief comparable to opioid treatment but with fewer side effects. So fewer headaches, fewer nausea, and less constipation. So opioids have lots of effects. One of them is to reduce pain, but also can in high doses, can, reduce the drive to breathe, which is what happens during an overdose, people become somnolent and they also stop breathing. But also it'll do things like paralyze the bowel or cause the bowel to be lazy and slow down transit and therefore cause constipation.

So it says this makes a Zetrogen a viable option for those seeking strong pain relief without the risk of opioids. Well, that's very interesting. It says the approval of cesetrogen is a major step forward in the fight against opioid misuse. This medication provides a safer option for patients who cannot take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs due to health issues like kidney disease or for those who are at risk of opioid addiction. There are lots of times when an opioid is the safest drug for somebody. you have like a little old lady, you can't give her a non-steroidal necessarily

because they can increase heart attack and stroke or can increase bleeding. And for the same reason, you may not want to give them a steroid, and a steroid can increase somebody's blood sugar. and so those two things could be contraindicated. So really in those people, the opioid is the safer choice, even though it has a slew of adverse effects that can be a problem. So this stuff could be a real game changer for people for whom only opioids are the safe alternative. So this is actually a safer alternative than that.

By targeting the peripheral nervous system, in other words, not the central nervous system, but the nervous system out in the body, it blocks pain signals without affecting the brain's reward system, which reduces the chances of addiction. So, yeah, the brain's just never getting that pain signal. So it's pretty cool. Now, it's 15 bucks per 50 milligram tablet. You've got to take it twice a day. So it's $30 a day right now. So if you're going to get a month supply of this stuff, it's going to be almost $1,000.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals conducting additional studies to evaluate the drug's effectiveness for other pain conditions, such as diabetic neuropathy, and lumbosacral ridiculopathy. That's pain from pinched nerve in the back. One variety of a lumbar radiculopathy is sciat. It says with its promising safety profile and efficacy,

Suzetrogen may help reduce the reliance on opioids offering a second. Okay, they're just saying the same shit over and over again. Let's see. So it's been approved. Can I prescribe it yet? So looking online, it looks like it already has a brand name. It's a Jernivax, J-O-U-R-N. a VX, and there is a

Gernivax Savings Card. Let's see where you have to go to. Usually, you're going to go tojournavax.com. Yeah, that's exactly it. And then you're going to click in the upright-hand corner savings card. And usually those things do not work if you have government

insurance, although I'm hoping with the new the new administration. that they'll change that BS because it's ridiculous that for whatever reason Medicare will not allow the use of discount cards. I can't think of a reason. I know their thing is they want everybody to be equal, and that's great, but everybody can get a discount card too. So I just don't understand it.

So I'm hoping that that's something that will get fixed. But yeah, you can get a discount card right now. Eligible patients with insurance will pay as little as $30 per prescription and you don't have to activate it. So isn't that something? Well, all right. I'm going to start prescribing this stuff and I will let you know what we find out. Okay, now here it says a patient with government-sponsored insurance can only use this card when their insurance does not provide coverage for journalbacks. So if it's like tier four and you've got to pay $1,000 for it, but they consider it, quote, unquote, covered at that high tier, then this will not work.

But if it says we absolutely will not pay for it, then the card will work. So I guess that's something. But even then, sometimes, like my mother-in-law has Medicare and Medicaid, and she's talked about it. So she can sometimes get help with her co-pay. So even if you have government insurance, always ask to see if you can get some help. You just call a company. But you always want to go to the, if it's a brand drug, it's almost always going to be the brand name.com. And then somewhere on there, usually in the upper right head corner will be a little box.

It says patient assistance. So check that out. All right. Very good. So I'll keep you in the loop. Now, speaking of opioid addiction, here's a weird one, boosting the endocannoid. A two alpha gulf in the brain can counteract opioid addiction while preserving their pain relief. How about that?

They use this chemical JZL 184, jizzle 184 may lead to safer treatments for pain management. Yeah, okay, well, guess what? We may not need you at all. The natural enhancement of chemicals produced by the body known as endocannabinoids. In other words, these are cannabis-like molecules that are produced in the body itself, which is why we have those receptors, which is interesting that, you know, it's always interesting to me how nature is efficient in the sense that it, you know, we have these receptors in our brains and other parts of our body that are, stimulated by these molecules called endocannabinoids, but then you've got the cannabis

plant that makes, you know, cannabinoids that will stimulate those same receptors. And it's just because there's just a finite number of receptors out there. And we are related. We have a common ancestor with plants. And we have a common ancestor with yeast, too. So it's interesting that yeast shit causes us. to have, you know, really wild Saturday nights sometimes, aka alcohol. So it's very interesting to me how all of these things sort of are reused by nature.

But anyway, the natural enhancement of these endocannobinoids may mitigate the addictive properties of opioids like morphine and oxycodone while preserving their pain-relieving effects. So just more evidence that cannabis is medicine and needs to be legalized. At least for medicine. Now, we do have legal THC in the form of dronabinol, which is laboratory synthesized delta 9 THC. It's sold as maranol or drinabinol. And we use. it in cancer patients for nausea and vomiting, and also patients with HIV and wasting syndromes where they're losing weight like crazy and need to stimulate their appetite. So we do have that, but we need more than that.

You know, there's way more than just Delta 9 THC in marijuana. And marijuana, different strains are good for different things. Some strains of marijuana are good for sleep and others are good for nausea and appetite, and others are good for just getting high. And through genetic manipulation, and I'm speaking of Mendelian genetic manipulation, in other words, crossbreeding, not doing genetic. splicing and that kind of stuff. You can come up with different strains that do different things.

If you go to a dispensary and say, this is my goal. I want to reduce anxiety. They'll have something there for you. Or if I need something to give me a little more focus or whatever, you know, they've got hybrids and different cross-breedings of plants that will produce these different effects. And as far as I'm concerned, this needs to be legal. We need to quit dicking around. The DEA has, for the last year, been talking about legalizing medicinal marijuana by making it Schedule 3. And Schedule 3 drug, so Schedule 2 drugs are things like hydrocodone, and oxycodone, and those kinds of things. And then Schedule 4s are your benzodiazepines, Xanax, and Ataband, stuff like that.

So Schedule 3 is going to be in between. And it's mostly things with codeine in them. Or, let's see, I think, if I remember correctly, testosterone is also Schedule 3. See, Schedule 3 drugs. So this is something I should really know off the top of my head. I lecture on this all the time, but I'm having, I am having some brain fog from this stupid influenza. Yeah, ketamine. And, well, this is wrong.

Wow, lysurgic acid. That is incorrect. A.I got that one wrong. Maybe it's Schedule 3 somewhere else. But, okay, so Schedule 3 drugs are Tylenol with codeine, ketamine, yeah, testosterone, good. Phew, I'll give myself a bell on that one. Anabolic, steroids, testosterone, any products containing less than 90 milligrams of codeine per dosage units, I'll be like Tylenol number three and stuff like that. The Schedule 4 drugs, as I said, are Xanax, Valium, Ativan, that kind of stuff.

And then at Tramadol, Schedule 4 as well. Although it does stimulate the opioid receptor. I'm surprised that it's still Schedule 4, if that's even correct. And then Schedule 2s are the stronger opioids like oxycodone, fentanyl, hydromorphone, aka dilauded, and demoral, which is my parodine, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Oh, and then the stimulants, the strong stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin. Okay, doke.

So they were going to make marijuana Schedule 3, and they're just dicking around, and enough's enough. I mean, we have the evidence that we need to at least make this medication. Right? Because why would we deprive, say, a hospice patient in Tennessee from a drug that people in Virginia can just go by right over the line? It sucks. This disparity between states is unjust for patients who really need these medications. So that needs to stop. So let's get with it. Okay. I'll be very interested to see how this administration handles that because there have been people – this isn't a right-wing, left-wing thing.

There have been plenty of people on the right who have advocated for the legalization of marijuana, if only to get it out of the hands of the black market. It's not crossing the border and then bringing other things with it like fentanyl. So anyway, there you go. All right. Well, let's answer some questions. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio.

Oh, hearing Ron Bennington's voice, by the way, reminds me. I need to let you guys know. the old school folk will remember Brooklyn Blowhard. His name was Gary Hansen. He was also known as the heckler, and he passed away a couple of days ago. And I kept in touch with Gary. He used to be on my show a lot, if you remember. And my friend Ahmed Zarbond reminded me that he,

I pulled a prank on him, and I told his sister this when she called me. We were just talking about Gary and reminiscing, and I said, you're going to hate me for this one. But he swallowed an expensive crown, it came loose, and he accidentally swallowed it. And I had him sifting through his own stool for at least two, maybe three weeks, knowing good and well it passed through him day one. and he just missed it. And it was really kind of a shitty thing. No pun intended to do to somebody. But it was a funny bit.

But anyway, poor old Gary, his last few years were pretty rough and without going into it too heavy. It was very difficult for him. And he passed away very suddenly. He had, you know, some heart rhythm changes, and they were going to try to maybe consider doing a procedure, and he sort of felt like he wasn't well enough to do it, and all of a sudden he just died suddenly. So very sad. At least he's at peace now because he was not at peace for the last quite a bit of his life. And I just felt really bad for him all this time.

So I'm sorry that he's that he's gone, but I'm also glad that he's not suffering anymore. But he was a classic Ronan Fez character. He was originally the heckler, and then he became Brooklyn Blowhard, and he and Pepper Hicks would get into it. And there's some great old Ronan Fez classic stuff on YouTube with Brooklyn Blowhard. If you remember him and you want to send a message to his family, go to my website at Dr.steve.com. And up on the right side, it'll say, you know, remember him. book for Gary Hansen and just leave some, you know, a story or condolences or memories or anything that you would like to say.

It's all moderated. I'll curate it and send it to his family. Right now, I just put it up about an hour ago and Tuky was the first person to say anything. Rocco Borough from Tuki Soup because he was a huge Ronan Fez fan and a big fan of Brooklyn Blowhard, so anyway. And I talked to Ronnie B. as well, and I think he did a bit of eulogy on his show as well. So it was very sad, but I just wanted to let you guys know because Blowhard used to be part of this show, too, way back in the beginning.

Matter of fact, I believe he was on the very first episode we ever did. And I remember Danny Ross saying, okay, now you get him on here and you tell him he's got to, that I was supposed to say something like, oh, they're telling us you've got to go because Gary liked to talk. And I remember his call was about irritable bowel syndrome. And what he wanted to hear about is diarrhea. And I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. I remember saying, Danny, I just can't do it.

I can't do it. So I let him talk for a while. And that's how we ended up being kind of friends. So it was either first or second weird medicine show that Gary was on. But anyway, all right. So very sad. Let's do a couple of questions. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime.

From streaming to shopping, Prime helps you get more out of your passions. So whether you're a fan of true crime or prefer a nail-biting novel from time to time, with services like Prime Video, Amazon Music, and Food. Fast free delivery, Prime makes it easy to get more out of whatever you're into or getting into. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to learn more. Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. Stay two nights and get a $50 Best Western gift card. Life's the trip. Make the most of it at Best Western.

Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions. New season, new chaos in college football. Big stage, big opportunity. This Labor Day weekend, The Wildness lives on ABC ESPN and the all-new ESPN app. What a way to start? Featuring top 10 teams like Clemson, Notre Dame, Alabama and LSU, and Bill Belichick's debut at North Carolina.

It's always special. These teams collide. Don't miss a lineup filled with electric matchups. Welcome back to Collins football. Kickoff week presented by Modelo, Labor Day Weekend on ESPN and ABC. Also available to stream on the all-new ESPN app. Introducing the perfect companion to your morning listening. routine. AG1's clinically backed formula is now flavor packed with three new delicious flavors,

tropical, berry, and citrus. Start the day on a high note with probiotics that taste like the tropics. Mix it up with micronutrients that taste like berry or citrus, and take it all the way back with the classic AG1 original with notes of pineapple and vanilla. Do your health of flavor, or four, with AG1 NextGen, the daily health drink. Learn more at drinkag1.com. sugar has great taste, zero BS, and obviously zero sugar. For those with zero room in their calendar, zero patients for slow walkers, those who get zero hours of sleep on a Saturday night, have zero filter, zero f***s given, and zero interest in grabbing a plain, boring water.

Grab a delicious vitamin water, zero sugar today. Uh-oh. Of course. Here we go. Here we go with this. Hey, Dr. Steve. Dr. Scott. My name is Colt from West Virginia. Hey, Colt. I'm going to try to help you out with your question quantity need. Maybe guys are doing well first, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. The question is I've been on testosterone replacement therapy for about a year and a half.

Yep. And I was just wondering, how long will the testicles continue to atrophy? So a year and a half in, it's definitely happening. They're way smaller than what they were. I feel like is there a headroom there? Does it just stop at some point? Well, yeah, it does. I mean, they don't just disappear, but they'll get to the point where there's just hardly any matrix left.

And so they'll become much smaller than they were. And it's just because when you take testosterone therapy, the testicles, they just feel like, well, what do you need us for? So there's this feedback loop between the pituitary, and it's a little more complicated than this, but the pituitary and the testicles themselves. And the pituitary, sending signals to the testicles, make testosterone, make testosterone. And then when it makes enough testosterone, and there's a surplus of testosterone, then the pituitary will stop sending that signal. And then the testicles will kind of slow down on production. And then when it gets down to a certain level, the pituitary will send the signal again.

Hey, let's go, let's go, let's go. And so you always have this undulating, just up and down, up and down. but right around sort of circling a midline so that you get an average amount of testosterone that the body needs. And it's a really good system. And when you start to lose testosterone either because the testicles become lazy, and you can tell that because the hormones from the pituitary, are increased because now they're starting to shout at the testicles. Come on, come on.

Let's make some testosterone, and the testicles are like, oh, yeah, okay, whatever. So when you have primary testicular failure, you'll have low testosterone but elevated pituitary hormones. Or you can have a tumor or a lapse or something in the pituitary that causes the pituitary to not produce that. signal to not place the order for testosterone, in which case both of them will be low. You'll have low testosterone and low pituitary hormones, and that is secondary hypogonadism. Primary hypogonadism being failure of the testicles to make testosterone. Well, anyway, let's just look at primary hypogonadism. You've got testicles that are lazy, but they're still making some testosterone.

They don't just drop to zero. Well, when you now you replace testosterone, testicular hormone, artificially, and you bring those levels back to normal, but you're doing it through exogenous, in other words, testosterone from the outside of the body. The testicles go, well, first off, the pituitary goes, well, we got plenty of fucking testosterone. So you guys can just calm down. And the testicles go, well, you know, we didn't make it. So they just shut down completely. So you got no signal going to the testicles, and you've got this overwhelming amount of testosterone that's just telling the testicles, you're no longer needed. And so the matrix of the testicle starts to atrophy because it's not doing anything.

It's not working anymore. And so the testicles begin to shrink. Now, there are ways around this because one of the things that that does is it makes you infertile. When you start taking testosterone replacement, you're also, when you stop, the testicles shut down, they're going to stop making sperm, too. So one thing that you can do is use a drug called Clomede or Clomaphene citrate. And really what it does is it stimulates the testicles to make testosterone. And when that happens is instead of getting that shutdown, the testicles wake up, they start producing more testosterone and they continue to produce sperm and they don't atrophy. So this is something that you can use in men who want to retry.

fertility, but who also have low testosterone. And chlomaphene citrate is a great drug. They also use it in women with polycystic ovary syndrome to normalize their ovulation. So it's a pretty cool drug. It is prescribed by fertility specialists for the most part. So if you are a young person and you've got low testosterone, first they've got to sort of figure out why. and is it something reversible? And if not, they can give you chlomaphene if you want to maintain fertility.

So that's the answer. They will continue to shrink until really there's just tissue left, and there's very little matrix. And so they will reduce to a minimum size, but they don't disappear altogether. All right. How about that? Oh, this one looks interesting. Hi, Dr. Steve.

Hello. This is Kate from Philly, and you answered my question about sex headaches, which was very helpful. Thank you. Excellent. But today I'm calling about Taurine, and I've seen some conflicting studies on its effects with colorectal cancer. Yeah.

So I'm wondering if you could offer any insights. Thank you very much. Have a good day. Yeah, okay. Tor, this is an interesting one because Torrine is in energy drinks, right? But it's an amino acid. And it may be linked to colorectal cancer risk, but not necessarily drinking energy drinks. The torene levels tend to be higher in colorectal cancer patients, and low torrine levels may indicate a poor prognosis.

However, touring can also suppress colorectal cancer growth and suppress metastases, in other words, the spread to other parts of the body. So it is a complex relationship. But if you do blood samples on people with colorectal cancer and you test for torring, it'll very often be elevated. You know, diet high in meat and fat is also associated with higher taurine level, so people will make that, that association. But gut bacteria metabolized toene into hydrogen sulfide, which causes inflammation and also can increase the risk for colorectal cancer also makes your farts stink. and, you know, Torrine conjugated bile salt, which is called Toracolic acid, may be a key component in linking diet and colorectal cancer risk. So it may just be a biomarker for colorectal cancer prognosis and not a cause at all.

And because I say that because these Torrine holoamines are affected. in treating some cancers that are caused by cancerous changes in the mucous membrane. And supplementing Toreen may play a role in anti-cancer therapy. So it's very interesting. We're still looking into it. There's no, for me, there's not enough evidence to say don't drink Toreen. drinks because there's taurine in, like I said, meat and fat anyway, mostly meat, fatty meats. But, you know, there are, here's an article, systematic review and meta-analysis,

Torine in its association with colorectal carcinoma. It says these findings highlight the potential of using taurine as well as other bile acid metabolites to diagnose colorectal cancer and to illustrate the link with microbiome. interactions. Overall, increased taurine concentrations are associated with significantly increased odds of colorectal cancer, but mostly an increase in relative expression of torin in colorectal cancer samples. So like I said, it may just simply be a marker rather than a factor. We see this in other things already, vitamin D is a good example of that, where if you have low vitamin D levels, you are at risk of certain cancers and certain cardiovascular events, but there's no evidence that supplementing vitamin D changes that. So it's more likely a marker of disease rather than a cause of disease.

although some of the newer studies now do show some small benefit in vitamin D. And I've always said from the beginning that it may help and it doesn't hurt. So if you want to supplement with vitamin D, I don't have a problem with that. Just don't expect it to be a panacea. You know, people say, well, you know, does vitamin D work? And it's like, well, for what? What are you trying to accomplish? You try to live longer?

We don't have real good evidence that vitamin D supplementation does that. You want to prevent rickets? Hell yeah. It's the number one way to prevent ricketts is to make sure your vitamin D levels are normal. But there are probably some subtle effects and most of them beneficial and very few negative effects as long as you're not megadosing. Remember, vitamin A, D, E, and K, ADEC are the fat, soluble, vitamins that can cause real problems if you make a dose on those, particularly vitamin A, but there is such a syndrome as hypervitaminosis D, too. So just take it the way it's recommended on the bottle, and you should be okay.

All right. All right. Let's see. Well, here's a good one. Hey, Dr. Steve, fluid gang here. Number one, your website stinks. need some update. Number two, put your phone number out there more

because I searched way too long for that bullshit. Number three. Okay, it's at the beginning of every show. I brought this woman home from the bar who was voluptuous. Excellent. She has a nice fluid.

Excellent. I ended up eating her out. Okay. And subsequently, the days following, my throat is sore. Oh. And I have the constant taste of pussy in my mouth.

Oh. My question to you is, is there any reason to be concerned because she was kind of gross? And then is that normal or is that all in my head? Thank you. I will listen off the air fluid. Okay. Thank you, sir. Yeah, well, you may have gotten some contaminated fluids, my friend.

So if you now have a sore throat and you taste, the taste that you have may be yeast. So this may simply be thrush. She may have had a yeast infection and that's what you're tasting. But if you look in your mouth, you should see a whitish exudate in your throat or a whitish sort of, you know, just coating. But you've got to go get checked. You need someone to stick a swab in your throat and test you for gonorrhea and chlamydia. And then if it just turns out to be yeast, easiest thing in the world to treat. But don't walk around with this because now if it goes untreated, it could get worse and then you're causing yourself problems.

And the next time you bring somebody home and you're having lunch at the Y, now you're giving it to them. So you're spreading it. So go to your primary care or go to the health department. If you don't want to go to your primary care because they're like family friend or something like that, I get that. It is embarrassing. But those are places where you really will not be judged. But if you're really worried about that, go to the county health department or go to an urgent care.

And just tell them what happened. They'll swab your throat. They'll look, they'll give you some nice statin, which is a liquid anti-east medication that you can swish around. That'll get rid of that yeast taste and get rid of any sort of thrush that you may have. And they'll also test you for gonorrhoea and chlamydia and then treat you appropriately if you have it. Herpes also possible but unlikely. Most of the time, that's going to be blisters on your tongue or your mouth, and you're not going to miss that. So, all right, my friends. Well, that'll do it for this week. Thanks for

indulging me. And hanging in there during my brain fog. I'll be better next week, I promise. Thanks to everyone who's made this show happen over the years. Listen to our Sirius XM show on the Faction Talk channel, SiriusXM Channel 103. I'm thinking now, Sundays at 7 p.m. only. I don't know. They're not keeping me in the loop on that, but that's okay. I appreciate being there. Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website at dr. steve.com for schedules, podcasts, and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps, quit smoking, get off your asses, get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.