Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 658 - Weir Back!

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

Esophageal stricture Props to the crew Sauna benefits Brain death Determination Bermuda triangle of Health Hot tub benefits Telehealth unsolicited medical care Please visit: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠STUFF.DOCTORSTEVE.COM⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/weirdmedicine⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠x.com/weirdmedicine⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/@weirdmedicine ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠(click JOIN and ACCEPT GIFTED MEMBERSHIPS. Join the "Fluid Family" for live recordings!) 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!  POSTING HERE REGULARLY, PLUS ALL MEDICAL QUESTIONS ANSWERED 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

This back-to-school season, spend less on your kids with Amazon. Hi, I'm Laura Clary, mom, chaos coordinator, and someone who has learned the hard way that back-to-school season is basically a second mortgage. Last year, my daughter decided she absolutely needed this very specific backpack, not just any backpack, the backpack. I found it, I bought it, I sent her off on the first day of school. She lost it by week two, gone forever. So remember, with Amazon.

Amazon's low back-to-school prices, just spend less on your kids, because every dollar you don't spend on them is a dollar you haven't spent on them. Man, you are one pathetic loser. Out of your mouth, child, babbling. I am too smart. I am to smart. I am too smart. I am too smart.

This is a marty. Dr. Steve, I hope you better at prostate screenings than you are at radio. Screening is a son of a bitch. If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve, host of weird medicine on Sirius XM103, and made popular by two really comedy shows Opian 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 heart. exacerbating my incredible woes. I want to take my brain out and blasts with the wave, an ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsating shave.

I want a magic pill for my ailments, the health equivalent is 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. It's weird medicine, the first and still only on censored medical show. History.

Broadcast Radio, now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my little town. Dr. Scott, the traditional Chinese medicine provider gives me street credit with the way. Oh, God, your camera's not working. So, let's see. Weirdo. God dang it.

Hang on, I said. Well, that's all right. This is a show for people who never listen to a medical show on the radio. Then, in the internet, if you have a question, you're embarrassed to take your regular medical provider. Can't find an answer anywhere else. Give us a call. 347-766, 4, 3-23, 3-23. that's 347

follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine or at DR Scott WM This is our website at Dr.steve.com for podcast, medical news and stuff you can buy. Most importantly, we are not your medical providers.

Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking it over with your healthcare provider. All right, very good. Very good. All right, Dr. Scott. Don't forget simplyerbils.net.

simply herbals.net. Are you still up and running? No, we found the clue. Oh, really? Oh, no. Yes, I skipped that bar. Really? Yeah.

It's done. Yep. Why is it done? I'm leaning towards more simplicity in life. That was complicated? Yeah. Some of it was. Not all of it.

Well, that kind of sucks. What are we going to do about CBD peppermint nasal spray? I don't know. I may be working on plan B. I mean, we had... If I come up with some, yeah. God, we had all these simply herbals. Let me see, what was this one?

And though you will try. That was old Dave Cecil. Shit, I got to call him. Dave's going to be in Bristol, Virginia, September 11th, at Cascade, if you guys want to come. He's freaking amazing. And he's coming back. It's part of... Yeah, it's part of Rhythm and Roots.

Rhythm and Rhythm and... Rhythm and... Which is always a good weekend. A lot of fun. That is. Got some big, big names coming to show. Yeah, so he's going to be an alternative to the main stage. Okay.

Because a lot of people don't want to mess with that. Oh, great. Totally agree. And plus, if it's hot outside, it's nice to have... Yeah. Or come in and get a beer with old Dave Cecil. Old Dave Cecil. He's the best.

Come see your pals. Bristol, Virginia. September 11th, the Cascade Ale House. Dave Cecil's return. You're triumphant return. Yeah. I'm excited about it too. All right.

Okay, doke. Let me see. Are we, can you see us moving because it's frozen on my screen? Oh, yeah, totally. It looks good at my screen. Why is it like that? Okay, I see why, because I'm a fool. Because we haven't done this in six months.

Yeah. Is it been six months? Pretty close. Okay. Yeah, almost six months, yeah. Well, okay, so we should, well, okay, we'll talk about it at some point. You're going to check out, but it's Patreon still going. Patreon.com slash Weird Medicine.

I'm still posting stuff there every week. And that's really the way to get this show. But Scott and I are going to still do stuff. Part of the six-month delay was the new studio, which has not worked out the way I wanted it to. I'm still trying to figure out how in the hell. to do this in that space. I can do TV there. You know, I was doing, you know,

I've got a cinema quality video camera and a giant green screen and stuff I was doing stuff for normal world. Well, hell, they don't exist anymore. And Stu and Dave do America. It doesn't really fit for me. And I love that. By the way, check them out on Blaze TV or on YouTube.

That's my favorite just sort of news commentary show was Stu and Dave do America. And, but, you know, I'm not doing videos for them. So I've got this studio, you know, cinema camera sitting there. And so I throw up videos on our YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash at weird medicine. And, you know, maybe they'll get 100 views. But they're excellent.

They are excellent. I had one that got 28,000 views. And it was about distinguishing, you know, convincing people that light beer is not as light as they think of it. It's called the light beer myth. And it, I wouldn't say it went viral, but for me, that was a pretty good one. It's pretty viral, yeah. The most viral video that I've got on there is my retina specialist sticking a needle in my eyeball. They got 300,000 views. And that was, what, 20-some years ago? Yeah, it was a long time ago. And so I reposted it as a short and it's got nothing, but it, I couldn't monetize it at the time because it was a quote-unquote

medical procedure. Now it's fine. But now I won't get the 300,000 views reposting it. So I've been fiddling around with AI. I've got an AI avatar that really, I mean, it looks better than me. I showed it to my wife. And she went, oh, you look good. And it's like, it's not me, asshole. Well, I think somebody on here asked if it was you were an AI. I think this is Dr. Stevie. Well, there's so much AI slop on there that I wanted to do. AI that was not slop, so I write the words. But I just don't have to have the studio.

I can sit here in my office and write up a script, throw it to the avatar, and it sits there and does it. Oh, wow. And it does the B-roll. It picks the videos, you know, before I would sit in front of the green screen. That would take however long it takes. I want to know. I'm old one-take, Steve. Yeah.

And so I would do it in a take, and then I got to sit down. And I've got to normalize the video because it uses the Panasonic V-Log for anybody that knows what that's about. And then I got a color correct. And then I have to do the chroma key to lay on the background and then edit out all the flubs. And then I have to find assets, you know, videos and stills to illustrate what I'm talking about. Okay, like if you're talking about a colonoscopy. Yeah, you'll show, you know, a picture of. or a video of a colonoscopy or whatever.

And then I got to put labels on it. Then I got to maybe write music if I want to put music behind it and do all that shit. For a four-minute video, it takes about four hours. Oh, yeah. Using my AI avatar, it literally takes 15 minutes. Isn't that crazy? And that's 13 minutes writing the script.

Well, you know, we were up here just messing around that one day. And it was like the first this year. And I thought it would be fun to have a song to celebrate the New Year. in the style of John Prine. I typed it an AI. Oh, yeah. The AI music thing. 15 seconds.

There are a lot of people that are really against this AI thing. Listen, I understand it from an artist standpoint, particularly like Troy, Troy Smith, who does a lot of our artwork. He does a lot of artwork for WATP, and he's doing the pig knuckle p-nuckle artwork.

Well, I had AI do it, and it was, you know, it was AI, flop, but it did it in like 30 minutes. Hell, he's six months into this. So I understand from an artist standpoint, you know, some computer is just generating this shit and kind of making you look bad and taking jobs away from people. Yep. But we can fight it, but it's common.

People fought against the automobile and they fought against the internet. And, you know, they fought against automation and stuff. It's common and there are nothing we can do by. it. So, you know, I'm going to use it for that purpose. The brains behind it is still going to be me. What I don't like is the AI slopper. They just say, write a 60-minute video on quantum physics, and then it does the whole thing. And it's so repetitive and shitty, and there's no insight into it, you know. Yeah. You know, to the AI overlords that are listening, I apologize. Yeah. You know, for being critical, but just so far not so good.

You still need a human brain behind that for it to be creative. So mine are all, I write them. Yep. And then just use that to generate the video. So, you know, I don't know. That's incredible, isn't it? Well, I never talking about that today on the news and the importance of how the AI is really going to help with medicine. It helps me every day.

Yeah. It's huge. There, I had a patient, and I can't talk, you know, because of HIPAA, but that had a very complex set of problems. And I knew I was, I felt like I was kind of missing something diagnostically. And I just kind of threw it into a medical AI. And it said, oh, it could be this, this, for that. I was not, yes, that's what it is. Fuck yes.

And so I did the test, and that's what it was. So it is, it can be very helpful. It can be bullshit, too. If you're sitting at home using chat GPT to diagnose your problems, there was a guy recently that apparently died because he was using chat GPT as his primary care. And it will very often affirm what it thinks that you want it to hear. So be very careful with that. You know, I have a bullshit detector where if it sends me something that's wrong,

I have enough experience after 35 years of doing medicine to detect when it's telling me something that's idiotic. But the fact that it can help me think outside the box is very helpful. So I don't see how an AI, although I could be wrong, will ever be able to have that nuanced kind of conversation. See, I mean, part of being a physician, particularly is reading the room. You got to know your audience. So there's certain folk that I can talk to a certain way. And particularly if they're from Appalachia, you know, my Appalachian dialect that I grew up with comes back. And they know I'm one of them.

You know, when I say, you know, they don't allow no corn squeezes in this house, billionaire. These little ladies that never touched any. But it tells them I'm one of them. Yes. Because some old Yankee hadn't gone know what the hell corn squeezings are. That's your damn Yankees. They know nothing about corn squeezes. They're going over and picking it up.

Google at it if you want to know. I'm not bothering to tell you. But, you know, I don't see an AI being able to read the room that way. And being able to have those nuanced conversations, particularly the ones that I have about, you know, end of life or symptom management. or who's going to be making decisions for you if something catastrophic happens. And making it not only, I'm not going to say it's fun, but people come out of there going, well, shit, that wasn't nearly as bad. That was almost entertaining.

You know, I don't see any high being able to do that. No, and I think that's the key doing advanced care planning. Yeah, and being in health care is to have that human touch. Yeah. I mean, it makes a difference. When you're my age, particularly, I've got a lot of experience. behind me and you can see things. I just, you know, I'll be surprised that an AI is ever able to do that, but we'll see.

I've been wrong about everything else so far. Okay, what was the thing you were going to say? No, no, Mughal 345 was saying that you're correct. He understands now, or she understands now why the weavers smashed all the looms. Yes. Agreed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, Mogle 345 says AI has sucked all the joy out of my job software engineering.

So I've done some coding. I put myself through medical school coding on 6502 machine code. Okay. And for the Commodore 64 and the Atari 800. And we were doing games and stuff, but I mean, it was machine language. We had to rewrite the operating system at one point

for the Commodore 64 because it just wouldn't do what we wanted it to do. And I understand, So I understand a little bit the creativity, but also the drudgery of coding. Yeah. And AI, I think if you're using it to write subroutines that you then write the main routine and you're calling the subroutines, I think that could really take, create some joy in your job because that's the pain in the ass part.

The fun part is coming up with the algorithm, you know, and the interrupts, which subroutines am I going to call here and under which. conditions am I going to do this? You can still write that part, but the subroutines themselves, like calculating what a hallway is going to look like, it's all vector calculus, you know, when you're standing here as opposed to when you walk three feet forward, I think AI could write those modules for you. So, Mogul, I hope that you get to, you can figure that out, because I think the combination of a human brain and an LLM, Helping writing code could be really powerful, but, you know, maybe we should talk about that sometime.

We should have mogul on, just talk. Yeah, that would be cool. Yeah. Because that's something we don't know a whole lot about. I mean, I don't. Wow. Wow. Elliot Franco wins for the distance award in the Philippines.

Hey, Elliot, Komustaka, Mabuti, Malaki Susumo, Mabajo, Anki-Kili-Kili-Li-Lam. Okay, anyway, that's not a little bit Tagalog. What does that mean you need to take a shit? Mabachal on Kili-Kilimo means you've got B-O. Oh, okay. Yeah, Kili, Kili, it's like under your armpits. That is funny.

Okay, Joe F-479 says, What program we're using that automatically generates the B-Rol clips? And that is H-E-J-E-N, H-E-Y-G-E-N. That's the one I found that does that so far the best. There will be something else that will be better. I was using Nexus Clips, and I got to be honest with you, it just royally sucks. And then the other one that will take your video and then make B-rolls, that is called Opus Clips, and they have AI producer. So you just give it a video of you, and then it will take it and it will put you in the

corner and put B-roll and illustrate and stuff like that. So if you look at our YouTube channel, you'll see examples of both. There's the ones that actually have me talking, and it'll take out your flubs and your ums and oz and all that kind of stuff and empty spaces and make you sound reasonably professional, and then it'll make a video out of it. But that is opus clips, AI producer, and then the other one is, hey, chow. Those are the two. All right.

Very interesting. All right. Anything else up there? Well, we got the old one pun. It's one pun. What do you do one pun? An old old top. Old top.

Good old old top's back. Well, there you go. And I saw King of All Diff's in there as well. It's all King of All Diff, yes. Chris Primer sent one weird Medicine with Dr. Steve gift memberships. Thank you.

They're 99 cents, so Myrtle might start doing them again. But anyway, all right. We have a lot of voicemails to get to, so I sent out a tweet. It said if you've ever, because I thought we might do a last show. Sure. I don't think this will be our last show. We'll just do them when we feel like doing them. And don't forget, the Patreon has regular content going to it, and the YouTube channel does it as well.

and if you want a little more content, do Patreon. It's like three bucks a month. If you just want the videos that I make before everybody else gets them and to be able to support the show, you can just join the YouTube channel for 99 cents. You're right. All right. You ready? Yeah, let's do it.

All right. Let's see here. So I sent out a tweet saying, if you've ever been helped by this show, there's a reason why I was, not for the first time catching a little bit of hill at work for online activities. And so I just wanted a little bit of buffer so I can say, listen, we've not only helped educate our audience, which at one time was up to 100K people when we were on Sirius X-M. And now it's more like around 15K, but it's still, it's respectable.

I'm happy with it. And it's our, there are, you know, our audience is our audience. I've never tried to go too far beyond that because they understand us. I wanted to have a little bit of backup say, because I know we've educated, we have saved some lives. I've had people who have emailed me saying every October when you do your annual, you know, checking of the testicles, I will get one or two emails saying, oh, I found something and I went and yeah, it was cancer. And if I hadn't been for you, we never would have known about it, or I would have found out about it too late. So anyway, so let's see what we got here.

So number one. Oh, uh-oh. Hello, this is Josh Ward calling from Noble Gold. I hope you're doing well today. I just received your request to get some information on gold and silver. So there you go. That's what we got. No, we did get some of the ones.

Let's see. Steve, it is Screw from the game-tapped movie show. What up, Scroo. I'm such a delight to hang out with you two years in a row in Las Vegas. Yes, sir. But my weird medicine story is as follows. I went to a doctor to have them

diagnosed something that I experienced, and she was unable to do it. And not long after that, I listened to weird medicine, and you describe my symptoms, the esophageal stricter. Yes. There you go.

I need this to say I never went back to that doctor again, but it's a very unpleasant experience, and it was so funny to have you know something that I couldn't get from a doctor-face-to-face. That's crazy. I hope you got it taken care of, though, my friend. And thank you for calling with that. Let's see. Hey, Steve, I'm Dave. I probably haven't really listened to too many your podcasts or anything since a while ago.

Don't worry about it. But, like, I know. know you've helped a bunch of people in your time. And thank you for doing that because I know how much it's helped all of those folks. I appreciate what you do. I appreciate what you have done. Thank you. Even if it doesn't air, I just wanted you to know that you are appreciated.

Yeah, thanks. We're just even talking about stuff. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. This is Taylor. You remember Taylor? Mm-hmm. He was the drummer for Indigo.

Yeah. Indy Ghost had the best rhythm section of any band I've ever seen. Right, right. And I hate that they're not together. They had a bass player named Le Q, the name Quentin, and the two of them were so tight together. So Taylor, it's awesome anyway. Hey, Dr. Steve.

I just saw your tweet about where you got your final show coming up and this is Taylor, formerly of Indigoast, and I just wanted to just call and say how much I've appreciated the show and everything, and especially through the pandemic, which was a tough time for everybody. But you went as far as to reach out with some resources to help me with what I was dealing with at the time. and I very much appreciate that. And I love you, dude. Thank you for a huge fan of the band back in the day. That's the great. And I just wish you the best of luck and the best of help to you.

That was the, thank you. Thank you, Taylor. And it's reciprocated for sure. That was one of the few bands where I very vividly remember standing up on the picnic table because at this venue at picnic table. in it, standing up on the picnic table, screaming MF at the, as loud as I possibly could. Made you stay out late? Love it.

All right. Love it. Let's see. Hello, folks. Hope everybody's doing well. Hello, Stacy. Hope the fluid family is staying healthy with everything. Hey, I had dinner the other night with a mutual friend, Mr. Robert Kelly.

And he was telling me about, you know, his family. About, you know, his time it is sauna, but he loves his sauna. And there's a study out of Finland. People who have spent 20 minutes in the sauna four times a week. Okay. And how, after a 20-year study, it's shown to help reduce cardiovascular issues and dementia. You all look that study up? Yeah, are we talking hot water or cold water saunas?

No, it was a hot water sauna. Okay. I mean, it was hot sauna. Okay. Finland, sauna, dementia study. See if you can find it. Because there could be so many confounding factors in Finland, particularly. This could be cultural with a genetic component.

Lowered ischemic risk. The QOPio. Well, that makes sense to me. The QOpio. What? Eschemic heart disease study. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. So they track 2,300 middle-aged men in Finland, age 42 to 60 over a 20-year period. Okay. So it's a nice long study. And going two to three times a week, lowered the risk of dementia by 22%. I do understand this a little bit, I think. When I was working out all the time, I was in a place that had a hot room and then they had a pool that was cold.

And I would get in the, either the hot tub or the sauna, and then I would jump in the pool. And you could feel your cardiovascular system just contracting when you went in the pool. And it felt so good. You got that sort of dopamine risk. And I wonder if just the dilation, because when you're in a sauna. It's a vascular dilator. Right. It's a vascular dilator.

That's exactly right. You know, your body's trying to give off heat. And so the vessels dilate, increasing the surface area. Yeah, they relax. Yeah, right. That's a good way to put it. They relax and they increase the surface area exposed to the skin. So you have more heat being transmitted from the core to the outside world.

And in the sauna, it hits equilibrium because you can't give off any more heat. than you're already getting. So, and then when you jump, when you either leave there or jump into a pool, you know, then now everything contracts, trying to retain heat. So, yeah, okay, well, here it is. It says this heat makes your blood vessels expand. This improves blood circulation and heart health, setting more blood to your brain. Heat triggers special proteins in the body that help repair damaged or misfolded proteins.

Well, shit. Okay. So the study shows a strong link but does not prove that it stops dementia. People who take frequent solanos may also live healthier lives overall. So it could just be that. Sure. And I'd like to take just one teeny step further. It helps with the fascia and the muscle and everything to relax.

Yeah. So that's just, it makes it easier for you to move. Yeah. Makes you a little bit. Explain what fash is because people think that you're endorsing a certain political. Oh. No. Fash is a soft tissue.

it's considered an omnidirectional tissue that wraps around everything and really forms everything in the body. Yeah, silver skin. Silver skin. If you've ever, if you've ever butchered meat, that's basically fashion. Yeah, or if you, when you open up

the package of chicken breast from the grocery store, and you look and there's three chicken breasts and they're kind of a silver lining in the fashes, the lining that's on top of that. Yeah. But you, we have it around everything. It's around blood vessels.

It's around bones. It's around muscles. It's around everything. But the greatest density of that fascia is in your lower back, the lumbo-thracal fashion. And it looks like a big dime. And you can look at an image on Google.

But that's, if you want to know what fash it feels like when you first wake up in a morning, you're stiff. Yeah. And you can't move very well because all that fash is matted together. Interesting. And what a lot of research is shown. And then when you get up and you start moving, you start tearing it a little bit and you create this little stuff called hyluronic acid, which is a lubricant.

Yeah. Then you start to feel a little better. It's also the same stuff that's in lip. filler. And what that does, so you start moving and everything starts to fill a little bit better as you're walking down the hallway to, you know, to get your coffee or whatever. And what a lot of research has shown is applying heat to fascia specifically increases blood flow and just releases really, you know, helps turn it loose. It's kind of cool. It's good for you. Good for you. All right. Let's take another call.

Yeah. This back to school season, spend less on your kids with Amman. Amazon. Hi, I'm Laura Clary, mom, overthinker, and someone who has a complicated relationship with the back-to-school supply list. Can we just be honest for a second? Kids are expensive. Last year, I went all out on my daughter's school supplies, color-coded folders, the fancy pencil case, gel pens and 17 colors she absolutely needed. By October, she had one pencil left. One. I don't know what happened to the rest, and honestly, neither does she. Amazon has everything your kids need for back-to-school at prices that won't make you want to cry in the school supply aisle. Great prices, huge selection, and when

half of it goes missing by October, at least you didn't break the bank. So remember, with Amazon's low back-to-school prices, just spend less on your kids, because every dollar you don't spend on them is a dollar you haven't spent on them. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and Game Sense remind you to play responsibly, 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, Dr. Steve, it's Josh Ward over here at Noble Gold.

Okay. All right. Dr. Steve, I'm watching this show, and they are, talking about doing a test to check if somebody is brain dead. Okay. And the guy's on a ventilator. Yep. They think he's brain dead. They're going to take him off the ventilator.

Yep. Or stop the ventilator giving him breath. Yeah. And see, they're going to keep it off for 10 minutes and see how much carbon dioxide keeps back in his blood. Yes. So apparently it has a lot of carbon dioxide in his blood. No.

I mean his brain is not telling his body to breathe. No. That's not exactly it, but he, you've got the gist of it. I'll explain it. So it's saying that on the most functional level, you know, or at least functional level, your brain isn't working. He's not telling you, the very thing you should be doing is telling you to breathe and it's not. So it pretty much confirms your brain dead.

Why did I always think that when they did the test, see if you're brain dead or not, Like I go back to that Skybo chick where, you know, some people thought she would come out and some people thought she would. Well, yeah. But this seems pretty fucking definite. Right. Okay. So big difference between Terry Shivo and brain death. So let me tell you the story of Terry Shivo.

She was 27. She had a stroke. I don't know why. I don't remember what the reason for it was. But she had a stroke and she was in a thing called a persistent vegetative state. So she was able to breathe on her own. And a persistent vegetative state is basically a coma with a sleep wake cycle. So her eyes might be open and stuff.

But she was unresponsive. And her husband kept her alive for two years using tube feedings. And after two years, he said, I don't think Terry'd want to live this way. And his reasoning, I believe, was that for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, the way that we left this world was we took to work. our bed and stopped eating and drinking. And so he wanted to remove the tube and let her die naturally in hospice. And her parents disagreed.

So they went to court to stop him. He went to court. They let him do it. And then he actually removed the tube. If I remember correctly, the parents went to court and the judge forced him to put it back in. And now we're off to the races back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And none of these court cases took five minutes.

You know, some of them took years. and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case because they'd already pretty much decided it in the past. And Congress passed a meaningless resolution, and now the usual suspects, MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, they all get involved. And 24-hour news cycle. This went on for 14 years. Now, if you would like to avoid this happening to you, let me tell you what would have solved this problem is an advanced care plan. Terry Shivo, if she had had an advanced care plan, we never would have heard of her because an advanced care plan is a document where you say, if I'm in a persistent vegetative state,

and I don't want tube feed, or you can say, whatever, I want tube feedings to go on forever, or I don't want tube feedings to go on forever. I only want them to go on for two weeks, and then you can pull it. Or I don't want it at all under that circumstance. And if she had had that document, we never would have heard of her, because it would have said, yeah, I wanted her. No, I don't. The answer to all of these problems is advanced care planning. And when you're 27, that's the last thing you're thinking about. Sure. But my medical students and residents, when they come through, they all get advanced care plans because we're doing them on everyone. My office seems to be the only ones who care about it. When I go to the hospital and see somebody, if they have an advanced care plan on their chart, it's because I fucking did it.

Right, right. I believe it. You know, there are a couple of my former residents that are doing them, but other than that, and it really, okay, let me tell you a story. This is fictional, but true enough. In the state of Virginia, if you have an 80-year-old gentleman on the ventilator with sepsis, and he's got stage four prostate cancer, and now they've turned the ventilator off, or now, I'm sorry, Sorry, they've turned sedation off and he's completely unresponsive, so he's comatose. We'll get back to the brain death thing in a second. But he's in a coma. He's never going to wake up.

And stage four prostate cancer, his sternum, you know, his breastbone is like balsa wood because he's got tumors in it. So if we do chest compressions, all it's going to do is just break him. But so normally you would go to the family and they would make the decision. decision, well, we need to transition to a more comfort-focused approach to care and remove the ventilator, make the patient comfortable, let them die naturally, right? Well, in this case, the decision maker is his beloved daughter-in-law, and his beloved daughter-in-law has been taking care of him for the last 10 years ever since her husband, who was the patient's son, died. She brings him his meals. She takes him to the doctor's appointment. She has been in the hospital every day with

him since he's been in the hospital. That beloved daughter-in-law in the state of Virginia, and that's not the only state, but let's just use Virginia right now, that beloved daughter-in-law cannot make the decision not only not to withdraw the ventilator and transition him to comfort care, which is something that this guy maybe said he wanted, but she can't even make him DNR. Oh, geez. Because only a family member or someone designated. in an advanced care plan can make the decision to withdraw life-sustaining treatment in the state

of Virginia and other states that are like that. So now what do you do? You can't do anything. So legally. So that problem, again, would have been solved. Remember, I told you that she brought him to his doctor's appointments. He went to the doctor a hundred times in the last 10 years. And the primary care provider not once decided to bring up, hey, you know what, if you want your daughter-in-law to be your decision maker, how about we do an advanced care plan? Or at the minimum, do a medical power of attorney. Sure. A medical power of attorney is just where you have a document that says, this is the person I want to make decisions for me. They can make any decision I would make if I'm unable to, and you get two people to co-sign it. The crazy thing is, in the state of Virginia,

I'm a notary. If I notarize it, their signature, it's no good in Virginia. But if I get two crackheads literally cooking meth in my parking lot and have them come in and co-sign, totally fine. But that makes it easy. So they make it easy to do that. Sure. But nobody's doing them. Oh, my gosh.

The answer to all these medical decision-making issues at end of life is advanced care planning. And if you are 50 years old and you have any medical problems, whatsoever and you're seeing your primary care bring up advanced care plan you do it tell them i want an advanced care plan if they go ugh then educate them yeah they can figure it out and if you have an attorney do it i'm going to tell you that's like going to lane bryant to get tires oh my yeah yeah i hear you okay or i hop to get you know escargo oh my so do you know so do you know oh my so don't do that. Okay? Get it needs to be a medical power of attorney is a medical document. Now, if you just want to do nothing but the medical power of attorney, then that's okay to do that with

an attorney. So no flies on the attorneys. But when it comes to a true medical advanced care plan that says, you know, has scenarios if I'm in a permanent coma or permanently confused or permanently dependent, these are the medical procedures I want and those that I don't want, that really is not what the attorneys do. No. You know, they do. They, do a living will. And any attorneys out there that do something different, God bless you, but you know I'm right about this. They'll print out a thing and says, if two of my doctors say that I'm in a terminal

condition continuing life-sustaining treatment would merely serve to prolong the dying process, then I authorized withholding or withdrawing of life-sustaining treatment. When does that kick in, Dr. Scott? Gosh. It kicks in when you're actively dying, because it already says that doing this is going to prolong the dying process. Well, you're already in the dying process. So it's kind of a little bit too little too late.

Yeah. It's better than nothing. Better than nothing, but yeah. Okay. Getting it in writing. A true medical advanced care plan. Anybody it wants one just email me. I'll send you one. You can take it to your doctor and get it filled down.

Yes. So anyway, so back to the brain death thing. Okay. What he's talking about is a thing called an apnea test. So if you have someone that is on the ventilator, Their heart is beating, but they have lost brain stem function. In other words, you turn off, like this guy I was talking about, that was on the ventilator, or you turn the sedation off and they're not responding.

So they have no brain stem function. You have to do them all. You've got to pull their eyes, you know, you've got to open their eyes and take a little thread from a Q-tip and rub it across the cornea, and they don't blink. And then you take some of the, and then you take the, tube that's in the ventilator tube to suction them out and you push that down into their throat and they don't cough or gag.

And you put cold water in their ear and there's no nystagmus. You know, if you roll somebody over and put cold water in their ear, their eyes will shake. You know, stuff like that. You have to do all the brainstem functions. And now to prove that they are, so you suspect their brain dead. Now you've got to show that there's a complete absence of brainstem. function. What's the most primal instinct? Breathing.

Breathing. Thank you, Dr. Scott. Give thyself a bell. So breathing. So what you do is you do this thing called the apnea test. So you turn the oxygen up on the ventilator and really hyper-oxygenate them for about 10 minutes. And then you turn off, you take a blood gas and you measure the carbon dioxide in the blood. Okay. And carbon dioxide is. an indicator of metabolism because we breathe in oxygen, we breathe out carbon dioxide. That's very simple, but it's mostly true.

So because we are building up carbon dioxide in our bloodstream, so to equilibrate it, we breathe it out. So if you're not breathing, it's going to build up in your bloodstream, right? So you do a blood gas. It's an arterial stick, and it looks at oxygen, carbon dioxide, stuff like that. Okay, now, and pH. Now you turn off the ventilator, and this is the longest 10 minutes that you'll ever spend in medicine. You turn off the ventilator, you take a little oxygen canyel and put it in down the end of the tracheal tube to just fill up the lungs with ambient oxygen.

And then you watch the patient. Is there any effort to breathe? So what I have people do, because 10 minutes is a long time to sit there and watch someone that's not breathing, but they're still alive. Right? Well, there's still there's metabolism still going on. So what I have

everybody do is once a minute we do vital signs. That keeps everybody and then you take a long. You watch the ventilator and you, I'm sorry, you watch the monitor. If they become unstable,

you have to stop the test but they rarely become unstable. It's amazing how the body can function when you hyper-oxygenated like that. So you watch one minute, two minutes, all the way to 10 minutes. And at the end of 10 minutes, you get a blood gas and you restart the ventilator.

Now, if the carbon dioxide goes up a certain level, it doesn't, for this, it doesn't matter, it has to go up a certain amount. And there's no respirations, then you, that's a positive test for lack of brain stem function. And it highly implies brain death. but just the one test by itself isn't sufficient. To do this according to the American Academy of Neurology, you need to do another test to confirm that it's permanent. That could be another apnea test in 24 hours, or you could do a cerebral blood flow test

where you see if there's blood flow going to the brain, if there isn't, and there's a positive apnea test, the patient is deceased. And if you do it according to this protocol, you will never have a case where someone wakes up in the morgue like you have heard before where people have been declared dead. You have to do it this way. Right, right.

Or you're going to end up with false positive brain death determinations, and people are going to wake up in the morgue going, what the hell is going on? Where am I? Right. Okay. But that's what he was watching. Wow.

All right? Yeah. Questions, comments? It's a lot. Good stuff. It's a lot. Good stuff. All right.

Let's see here. Hey, Dr. Steve. this is Jeff and Georgia. Hey. Got a question. I'm like one of those people that starts and ends every day in my hot tub. Okay. And, uh, you know, it feels great.

But when you, when you go into the, uh, the hot tub store, they have this giant poster claiming you receive like 20 immediate health benefits from soaking in a hot tub. Yeah. And that sounds like horseshit. I mean, is there any actual benefit other than it makes me feel good? I, I'm, I'm in my hot tub right now at this very moment. naked half staff. Excellent.

Thank you. It's so hot. Yeah, absolutely. There are benefits. And we talked about that. This is just coincidence that we talked about the sauna thing. But, yeah, muscle relaxation, pain relief, people sleep better. Yeah.

I need to get one of those. I've been waking up at 5 o'clock every day. Yeah. Sometimes I go back to sleep. Sometimes I don't. That's your prostate. That's your prostate. It's not.

I don't have to get up to piss. I never get up to piss. Don't you never? Never. Never. Never it. You're one in a million. I know.

Hot tubs are good. I've got one. I love it. Love it, love it. Yeah, stress reduction. I mean, stress reduction is good. And, yeah, the soaking in the hot tub 90 minutes before bedtime, apparently. Oh, yeah.

That core temperature drop. It's not the core temperature increase. It's the drop when you come out. That's apparently helped signal to your body that it's time to sleep. And people have, you have. get lower blood pressure too. Why? Vazzo dilation. Excellent. Very good.

Give thyself a bell. So, yeah, if you have a circular, you know, take a hose, hook it up to a pump and then hook the other end of the hose up to the input of the pump and fill the whole thing up and turn it on and put a pressure gauge on the, you know, in that circuit somewhere. You know, if you run the pump faster, the pressure will go up. If you decrease the caliber of the pipe, the pressure will go up. Yes. So conversely, if you increase the pressure or the caliber of the pipe, the pressure will go down if the volume stays the same.

And that's what happens in the body. Yeah, it's good for you. Yeah. So it's not horse yet. Nope. So enjoy. Enjoy. Yeah.

Now, there are contraindications to going in a hot tub if you already have low blood pressure. Right. nitrates and stuff like that. You've got to talk to your cardiologist about whether you can go in the hot tub or not. Okay, so let's see here. I hope you're doing good. I'm so sorry to hear that. My apologies.

Oh, it's okay, man. Anyway. Okay, I missed the whole, I lost the thread on that. Okay, hang on. I hope you're doing good. I'm not doing worth a shit. I'm so sorry to hear that. My apologies.

Oh, Scott's okay, man. Anyway, kind of ethical question for you. I keep getting a text message from a telehealth medical care provider wanting me to send them a list of their met of the meds that I'm owned to see if they can help me. Yeah, don't do that. That just seems so unethical. Oh, it is, dude. To be soliciting business. No, absolutely.

No, that unsolicited medical care is. is, yeah, that's not okay. Do not answer unsolicited text messages about your health care. Don't give them any information whatsoever. Now, if it's your doctor, you'll know, or your PA or your nurse practitioner, you will know that it's them sending you that message because presumably it'll be scheduled. They can send you results and stuff like that, but requests for information, from anyone that you don't know is bullshit and don't, don't do that.

So I hope Stacey didn't do that. Anyway, all right. No, you know he didn't. All right. Hey, Darth Nugs. Hey, KB, yay. KB, that's me, is KB. She's awesome.

Okay, Trash Tarian says, I have an advanced directive, but it's very generic. Can you give me guidance on making it more specific? Yeah, absolutely. Email me. I'll send you a copy of a medical advanced care plan that actually I created. And I created it to answer all of the questions that people have asked me over the years that I have to explain over and over and over again when I'm doing an advanced care plan.

And I just made it into a thing that is very self-explanatory. So feel free to email me. You know, I give out my email all the time. was Dr. Steve 202 at gmail.com. Or you can go through our website. I believe the contact things still works there. Now, Darth Nuggs says St. Luke stays flooding my email and notification. Yes.

Now, if you've ever been to a health system, then you sign something that said, you can send me information through my text messages. You can make them stop doing that if you want. But if you have a relationship with them, that's different than an unsolicit. one. Darth Nuggs says, give yourself a bell, being the same one

the Undertaker used, is very on brand for Dr. Steve. Yes, thank you. I'm glad you caught that. KB says, I've got a healthy prostate. Yes, I do. I do.

It's very functional. Premium says, oh, Steve is doing segments about Chad, too. About brain death. we had Chad on our show. He was... Remember Chad Zumach?

We had him on the show. He wanted to quit comedy and you talked to him about doing visualization therapy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, he was on the way into a sports bar to watch. Right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He was down in Florida for him. He's a very polarizing character. I find him quite amusing. Okay, old top says I live in an area that's a medical Bermuda Triangle. Dr. Steve and Dr. Scott are the best sources. Oh, no, for medical information that I have.

I'm so sorry. And there's Amanda. Yay. Hello. Paperwork matters so much. Let's see. What else we got? What else you got?

Old top 4.59. Now, this is your job, Scott. Dr. Steve and Dr. Scott have helped me tremendously over the years by answering my questions, providing information and advice with both conventional and holistic medicine. There you go. There you go. There you go. Well, you don't do holistic medicine. You do traditional Chinese medicine.

Well, I do holistic medicine. Consider that holistic. Yeah. Yeah, that's for you. Compiliter. Well, I teach people we need to have a holistic approach to our patients, meaning you got to look at the whole patient. No, I did. Yeah.

And the best way to look at the whole patient is do home visits. So any of you budding physicians out there, do home visits. Because when you see patients against your background, you know, the background in your office, that's one thing. But when you see them against their own background and their environment. Yeah. It really can change things. It can answer a lot of questions, too. No, I say mine's holistic because if I think somebody needs an EKG or an antibiotic or a surgery, I'll send them immediately.

Well, sure. Well, that's complementary medicine. It just depends on your definition of holistic. But yes, I think if you're saying looking at the whole patient, then that's what we advocate that. I am reposting all of the early weird medicine stuff at patreon.com. and I was thinking about not posting the COVID ones just because God, who wants to listen to that shit again? But I think just for historical purposes, I'm going to because I had a lot of evolution in my opinions about things over time. And this business with taking the fifth, when you're talking about, you know, a pandemic that killed however many millions of people across the world, that's some bullshit right there.

So I think that kind of caps off the whole thing. And a lot of people who, a lot of people were vindicated who said a lot of things back in the time. And, you know, we got our show, this is when you were off the show, and Tacey was my co-host, we had a content strike

just because I happened to mention the I-word that they were doing research on Clinical Trials.gov. with regard to COVID and stuff. So we got hit with that as well. So anyway, yeah, it was something. I tell you. So I think I will post all of those. They're coming.

They're coming real soon. I just recently posted the one where GVAC passed away, and that was traumatic. I couldn't even listen to it. So anyway, God bless GVAC. We miss them every day. All right, everybody. Check your stupid nuts for lumps.

Quit smoke and get off your asses, get some exercise. And we'll see you and I don't know soon for the next edition of weird medicine. Hopefully sooner than what we've been doing. Thank you for your patience.