In this video, Dr. Mike, a popular medical YouTuber, answers various medical questions from his viewers. He discusses topics such as the dangers of sleeping next to a WiFi router, the hygiene of licking pens, the effects of drinking your own blood, the consequences of holding in poop, the negative impact of staying up all night, the difference between allergies and intolerances, the curly nature of pubic hair, the use of smelling salts, ways to minimize scar appearance, tips for sneezing quietly, the potential risks of shaving certain body parts, how doctors determine the right size for knee or hip replacements, what surgeons do with tumors once they’ve been removed, the causes of random itchiness, and the fear of needles in pursuing a career in nursing.
Key Insights:
– Sleeping next to a WiFi router or keeping a cellphone next to your brain is not recommended, although there is no evidence to suggest it is dangerous.
– Licking a pen may not be medically advised due to the presence of bacteria and potential contact with fecal matter.
– Drinking your own blood can cause GI disturbances such as constipation or diarrhea, depending on the individual.
– Holding in poop for extended periods can lead to nausea, vomiting, and fecal incontinence.
– Staying up all night several nights a week can have negative impacts on neurological health, such as increasing the risk of conditions like Alzheimer’s and dementia.
– VR motion sickness arises from a disconnect between visual and vestibular cues, while motion sickness when driving is caused by a different disconnect.
– Waking up early can result in indigestion due to the shift from the rest/repair/digest state to the fight/flight response.
– Allergies involve histamine-driven responses, including itchiness and hives, while intolerances usually cause other bodily dysfunctions without an allergic reaction.
– Pubic hair is curly due to changes in terminal hair during puberty, likely to enhance pheromone trapping and offer friction protection.
– Smelling salts work by irritating the nasal receptors, leading to a shock response in the brain and awakening the individual.
– Scars can be minimized through surgical approaches or laser treatments, while topical creams have limited effectiveness.
– Sneeze as loudly as you need to without feeling ashamed, as it is a natural bodily function.
– Shaving the pubic region may increase the risk of transmitting STIs and create openings for infections.
– Orthopedic surgeons use measurements, x-rays, and trial different sizes in the operating room to determine the right size for knee or hip replacements.
– Tumors that have been removed are typically sent to pathology for analysis and to ensure complete removal.
– Itchiness can have various causes, including physical or chemical irritation on the skin or nerve misfires.
– A fear of needles should not deter someone from pursuing a career in nursing, as phobias can be overcome with proper treatments and therapies.
Transcript
– I’ve seen the comment section. You guys have a lot of medical questions and I pulled together and I’m gonna answer some of the most juicy ones right now. Huge thank you to ShipStation for sponsoring this video. Pee-woop! Daniel von Diego: „Is it dangerous to sleep next to a WiFi router?“ Do we have evidence that it’s dangerous? No. Do I recommend it? No. Move it away. Find a different point for it. Don’t keep it next to your brain. Also, keep your cellphone away from your brain. And keep your cellphone out of arm’s reach so you don’t reach for it in the middle of the night if you can’t sleep ‚cause that’s the sure-fire way to disturb your sleep. „What advice do you have for the partners of people who work in medicine? Given the long hours of workload, it can be difficult to stay connected.“ It’s very difficult. Do you know how many relationships end when someone goes to medical school? Tons. But also, do you know how many relationships form ‚cause you realize that like sometimes attracts like? Humans are magnets. „Is it okay to lick a pen?“ Medically, I wouldn’t advise. Is it okay? Ethically, morally, I mean, I think it’s fine. Don’t lick part of the pen that releases ink. That’s not edible. The way that I think about pens is the same way that I think about our fingers. Our fingers are disgusting. They have a lot of bacteria on them. If you touch your phone, you’re essentially touching other people’s poop. There’s poop on everything these days: keyboards, phones, water bottles, it’s all over the place. It’s just floating around. And because of that, it’s probably on your pen too. And if you’re gonna put your pet in your mouth, you’re putting poop in your mouth. So is it okay to lick poop? No, then not okay to lick your pen. That’s how I’m stating my answer. „Is drinking my own blood bad for me? I promise I don’t do it on purpose, but it happens a lot.“ It is a problem. Drinking blood is a GI disturber, whatever. It’s not good for your GI system. In some people it’s can cause tremendous constipation. Because what does blood have in it? Iron. In others, it can cause inflammation and irritation of your GI tract, leading to diarrhea. How do we know this? In those who have frequent nose bleeds and then do this, start swallowing a lot of blood, it can lead to nausea, vomiting, and/or constipation/diarrhea if it stays there long enough. „Is it bad to hold in poop?“ You have an anal sphincter for reason. It’s so that you don’t just poop while you’re sitting there. If you lose control of your poop, it’s called fecal incontinence, and that can happen as a result of all sorts of medical problems. A common one that we talk about or learn about in boards is something called cauda equina syndrome. That lower end of your spinal cord actually starts getting compressed, and it creates such compression that you you develop incontinence or decreased sensation in the saddle area of your body. But holding in your poop is a normal thing for a human. So just be reasonable with it. Don’t overdo it. Because you could actually hold in your poop so long that you start developing nausea and vomiting because you’re actually creating a backup in the system. So don’t do that. „Is it bad to stay up all night several nights a week?“ It is absolutely bad. In fact, I’m gonna go on record and say, the uptick in neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s, dementia, et cetera, I believe is happening due to the fact that we no longer respect sleep. We pride ourselves on sleeping less and working more. We value hustle culture. We stay up late because of social media and anxiety and mental health struggles, and as a result, we’re creating brain problems. Back to the questions in just a second, but first, I wanna talk to you about ShipStation. Look, last year, I dealt with so many headaches shipping out my new merch, so I get the struggle of running your own online business. Things don’t have to be that hard though, because thanks to ShipStation, shipping becomes the easiest part of the job. Their order management and software is designed to make the lives of retailers of all sizes hassle-free. From the dashboard, I can easily import orders from Amazon, eBay, Etsy, even my own website and automate just about every shipping task, even from my phone. They work with international and local shipping companies around the world, like FedEx and UPS, and I even get access to discounted rates that are usually reserved for Fortune 500 companies without the contract or commitments. 98% of companies that use ShipStation for a year keep using it for as long as they’re in business. And now it’s available in Australia, Canada, and the UK. Ship more in less time. Just go to ShipStation.com/DoctorMike to get a 60-day free trial. Remember, doctor is spelled out. That’s two months free of no-hassle, stress-free shipping. All right, let’s get back to the questions. „Why am I able to play any VR game for countless hours without getting sick, but the moment I start driving a car, I get motion sickness?“ In a VR people get motion sick because there’s a disconnect from what their vision is seeing versus what their semicircular canals in their ears are experiencing. So that sort of disconnect can create nausea in some people that you can get used to. In an automobile, because you’re constantly starting and stopping, you’re having the opposite disconnect where your semicircular canals are experiencing a lot of activation, a lot of stimulus, but your vision might be looking at a still object. So that’s a different disconnect on opposite ends of the spectrum, and you can have worse motion sickness on one end but not the other. „Every time I wake up much earlier than normal, like to catch a flight, I get really bad indigestion. Is this just coincidence or is something going on?“ There’s something going on. The central nervous system of our bodies works on two different systems. One is the rest, repair, and digest nervous system that happens and gets activated when we sleep, when we chill, when we meditate. And then the flight or flight response system, which is like what happens if we see a threat. When we’re sleeping, we’re in rest/digest. If you don’t get enough sleep, you don’t repair, you don’t digest well. So when you wake up early, your body has to go into fight or flight mode. It has to kick in your adrenaline in order to keep you awake and allow you to function normally. And also, many people, to combat waking up early, drink a ton of caffeine which stimulates acid secretion from your stomach, which can create gastroesophageal reflux, which is like traditional heartburn. „What’s the difference between an allergy and an intolerance?“ Such an important question here because so many people say they’re allergic to things when they’re really not. And then it creates other problems. So many of my patients say that they have a penicillin allergy when they actually don’t. And as a result, they lose a set of antibiotics that are actually quite effective and have a low risk of side effects. An allergy is a histamine-driven response where you actually get itchiness, hives, and you start scratching your skin. There’s eosinophils present. You could also have an allergic response to anaphylaxis where your throat starts closing up, you have swelling because histamine start allowing the swelling of tissues by making blood vessels more porous. Then you get cytokines and all these inflammatory cells come, and it becomes a big problem ‚cause it closes off your airway. An intolerance is when something just doesn’t sit right with you. It causes some other malfunction in your body. For example, if you’re lactose intolerant, it’s not an allergy because you don’t get a rash, you don’t get anaphylaxis. But you do have diarrhea, so it’s an intolerance, but not an allergy. „Why is my pubic hair so curly?“ Okay, Max, did not expect that one. Pubic hair is a type of hair called terminal hair. It starts as vellus hair on our bodies when we’re babies. Vellus hair is the type of peach fuzz hair that we actually still have on our bodies. And in certain areas due to puberty, we start developing terminal hair changes and it becomes deeper, it becomes more coarse, becomes more curly. In fact, pubic hair really doesn’t grow longer than six inches because of how often it sheds and breaks out. Also, really interesting about pubic hair… Never thought I would say that. But I think the reason that it’s curly is because back in the day, cavemen days/cavewomen days, we had a bush and that bush helped us have better locking in of our pheromones, that smell. It was actually an aphrodisiac at this time when we all walked around without clothing. It was an advantage for those who had curlier pubes to survive. Also, pubes are great protection from friction. „What are smelling salts made of? How do they work?“ You sniff them and the the nasal receptors get so irritated by them, it sends a shock response to your brain and it wakes you up. „Is there a way to minimize the appearance of scars?“ There are things you can do about scars, mostly and where I see the best results from, through lasers and through surgical approaches. There’s very little thing you can do topically in terms of like putting a cream on it. There are some creams that do some benefit in terms of smoothening the scar, but removing the scar can only really be done surgically or with a laser, which is basically a type of surgery, in my opinion. My friend Dr. Bhanusali does a great job of this on his Instagram channel. DarkHighness666: „I’m a woman and I sneeze too loud, it’s embarrassing. What can I do to not sneeze so loudly?“ Sneeze loudly, just dab when you do it. Don’t let anyone judge you. The fact that you’re worried about this is worth investigating with your doctor because you should not feel ashamed by carrying out a normal human body act in front of others. Everyone sneezes and it’s okay to sneeze. And if you sneeze loudly, who cares? „Are there parts of my body I shouldn’t shave?“ That’s actually a good question because we shave our faces. Some people shave their armpits, benign, but actually can create friction, especially if you do a lot of running. The problem with shaving your pube… I feel like we’re covered a lot of pubic stuff in this video. The problem with shaving your pubic region is there has been some research showing that there are increased STI rates when you do shave because more skin on skin contact, so more chance to spread STIs. Also, when you shave, you can create micro-tears, leading to openings in the skin, which can allow body fluids and blood to get into, thereby creating another infection. Maybe skipping out shaving the pubes is not a bad idea. „When you need a knee or hip replacement, how do doctors know the right size?“ That’s a good question for an orthopedic surgeon. I’m pretty sure there’s a measurement they do prior to inserting the instrument. A, look at the x-ray and they’ll get a general sense, but then they probably trial different sizes in the operating room and they see. Orthopedic surgeons, please chime in. „Hey, doc, what do surgeons do with tumors once they’ve been removed?“ Generally, we send them to pathology for analysis through microscopy to see A, what kind of tumor they are, how differentiated they are, what cells are present. In some cases like with skin cancers, we do a cutout, and sometimes we look right then and there to make sure that we cut out the entire margin of the tumor to make sure that we didn’t leave any cancer cells behind. „Why do humans randomly to get itchy? I understand why you itch from hairs or bugs being on you, but so often I itch when there’s nothing touching me. What gives?“ Okay, Theresa, this is very important. Because if you are itchy like that, to that degree, perhaps there’s a medical condition going on, perhaps allergic, perhaps otherwise, but we would need to investigate that further. There’s many reasons why humans get itchy. Itchiness can come from something physically bothering your skin or a chemical reaction bothering your skin. Both can cause itchiness. And there’s also like the nerve thing. Nerves misfire and can make it feel like an itching sensation is present when it’s not really there. „I’m thinking about becoming a nurse, but I have a serious fear of needles. Do you think it’s worth pursuing or should I look into else?“ That is something that you can overcome. There are legitimate medical treatments and therapies targeted at those who have phobias of any kind. Needles are one that you can definitely overcome. So if that’s the sole thing that’s preventing you from having an amazing long career that is much needed, do not let it stop you from having a very productive, rewarding job because of a phobia that you can overcome. Is it dangerous to hold in a sneeze? Click here to find out. And also, don’t miss out on your 60-day free trial to ShipStation by visiting ShipStation.com/DoctorMike. As always, stay happy and healthy. Click. (upbeat music)
