- Well hello there. My inbox just got bombarded because Conan O'Brien vlogged his doctors visit. So I thought I'd watch it and react to it. Perhaps even a good learning opportunity. Let's get started. Elevator Music) - Anyone notice yet today that my voice sounds a little different? Does it sound a little different to you? A little sexier? A little lower? Thanks a lot. (Laughter) There's a reason for that. I hadn't actually felt well today. (Awww) (Wah Wah) - You bastards. Yeah, womp womp. (Laughter) We're talking about my physical health. - And little does Conan know, his physical health is intimately tied in with his mental health. So if he's not performing well physically, it can make him quite upset, which can lead to feelings of worry, anxiety, even depression in some cases. - I just have some kind
of virus or something. And last night I was up all night. Really sore throat. I woke up today achy. Just don't feel well. Come to work cause the show must go on. - What is sounds like that he's describing could be either a viral illness or it could be bacterial illness. The fact that he's saying body aches and sore throat. He's putting all of
these systems together. Sounds like I'm leaning towards viral. But it's hard to know from
his limited description here. The one thing I will tell
you that some of the most painful sore throats happen as a result of a viral illness, not strep throat. So don't jump to concluding that because your throat is really sore, it must mean you have strep throat. Actually it's not that case. It's actually the other way. - A lot of Nyquil. (Laughter) I woke up with my pants around my ankles. - Did you feel better? - I felt better. So did the guy I was with. - Oh! He just threw in one of those didn't he? Please don't take a lot of Nyquil folks. Cause Nyquil is actually
a combination medicine. It has what is the
equivalent of Benadryl in it and Tylenol. So it not only is a pain reliever, but it also puts you to sleep. However Benadryl, or Nyquil for that matter, if you take it and you don't go to sleep and you stay up, it's actually worse for you in terms of concentration and
ability to perform tasks than alcohol. There's actually been a study done that tested people who
were under the influence of alcohol in comparison to those who took benadryl, And those who took
benadryl were worse drivers than the alcohol group. Isn't that crazy? - Do you feel comfortable talking about the stomach stuff that was going on? Like was it nausea, diarrhea? What was that symptom? - You really want me
to talk about diarrhea on television? - When we're seeing the symptoms of an upper respiratory infection start spreading to the GI tract, what that points my mind
to is to a specific virus called Adenovirus. Now this is one that affects both upper respiratory and GI tract and can cause diarrhea. In fact diarrhea and upper respiratory symptoms point you to the direction of thinking that this
could be caused by a virus. Because if you have just an infection of bacteria in your throat, it's very unlikely that it's gonna start spreading into the GI system right away. So the fact that he's having multiple system involvement here really makes me lean towards the idea
that this is a virus. - Do you ever find yourself
talking to patients and they mention that they've had diarrhea and you start laughing? - Not anymore. - Oh. That's sad when all the
joy goes out of your life. - I don't think I've ever laughed when a patient tells me diarrhea unless they describe it in a funny way where they're trying to be funny. Then we can share a laugh. I try and do some kind of humor with it. Like are you just constantly running? Are you basically having
diarrhea in your pants? The patients and I both get a good laugh and they understand that
this is very disarming. Functions as a way to
break down this barrier that often exists between
patients and doctors where we have to be very strict and very proper. We can have a good time. We can laugh. - If this somehow could
all end with you saying well you're an amazing male specimen, and I had that on camera, that would be great. But that's you decide. - An amazing male specimen. Can you imagine if like a doctor does a prostate exam and then
afterwards he's like you're an amazing male specimen. I think that would be really
weird feedback to get. We're trained not to use
weird language like that during our practicals. Like for example, if I'm listening to someone's heart, I'm looking inside their ears, I'm doing a vaginal exam. I'm always trained to say
everything looks normal, or everything sounds normal. Instead of saying good. When you say everything looks normal, that's less provocative, there's no real wrong way to take normal. - Let's start with
taking your temperature. - Why'd they have the
Scrubs poster right there that's even hanging crooked for effect? That's awesome. (Laughter) He looks so miserable. (Laughter) (Beeping) - [Doctor] Right on. 97.5 you're actually cold. - A lot of wax in there. - I wonder if he's wincing
cause she's putting it in deep, or he's just trying to be funny with it. Cause generally that procedure shouldn't be that uncomfortable. You can get a good view
of the tympanic membrane or the eardrum without pushing too far and causing discomfort. It's actually one of the mistakes that a lot of my medical students make that I have to tell them why are you pushing in so deep? Think about how uncomfortable that feels to the patient. And when they realize that sweet spot, then you can do it
consistently over and over again without causing
discomfort to a patient. - Stick your tongue out. Ready? - [Conan O'Brien] (gagging) - The best thing you can do when a doctor is trying to look into
the back of your throat, keep your tongue out the whole time and consistently say the sound ah. (Ah) The reason why we say say ah, is cause it lifts your pallet. And when it lifts your pallet, we have a really good view of the back of your throat. I'll say to my patients open up, they'll open their mouth, they'll stick their tongue out, and I'll say say ah, and they'll go ah. I didn't get any view of anything. - What're you feeling there? - Feeling for swollen lymph nodes, glands. Anything tender? - Not yet. - If they were swollen and enlarged, that would be indicative
of a form of infection or inflammation. Glands do get swollen during that time, but they should return back to normal after a period of time. If your glands don't return to normal and they stay swollen, that's a reason to go see your doctor. - There's a tattoo there. It says REO Speedwagon rules. (Laughter) I got it in 1978. I thought that band was
gonna go the distance. - [Doctor] Oh my God. Two more. - One of the most important things that you wanna tell patients when you're listening to their lungs using a stethoscope, is to make sure they take deep breaths through their mouth. This is the largest airway. There's no mucus in there unlike the nose which is a smaller airway, there's mucus in there, and you can get upper airway sounds like (sniffing). That sound gets
transmitted into your lungs and you'll hear it, and you won't be able to decipher is that coming from the nose or from the lungs? - I want as much medication as I could possibly have. - Really? - A lot of my patients come in asking for medication. Its a common misconception
that if you have a virus or if you have a strep throat, that unless you get antibiotics, you're not gonna get better. This is not the case. If you're otherwise healthy, you're always gonna get better. In fact if you have strep throat, for which we give antibiotics for, we are only shorting the
course of strep throat illness by 16 hours. It normally lasts 7 to 8 days. And we're saving you 16 hours of symptoms by giving you the antibiotic. The antibiotic is not for your symptoms, ladies and gentlemen. The antibiotic is there
strictly to prevent the complications of strep throat. - You know, sometimes you hear about
like there's a cool Tylenol that they only sell in Sweden, that has weed in it, a little bit of cocaine. - (Laughter) - I don't think it'll help you. - No? - No. - Can I have it anyway? (Laughter) - I've had patients say
that they heard about some cool supplement that promises to shorten the duration of a cold if they take mega doses of it. No. There's no magic fix. There's no magic vitamin. Its about getting the proper rest, hydration, getting the right amount of calories in, and allowing your body to do its job. (Laughter) - Nervous? - A little bit. You haven't said anything for a while. - The reason why we don't
say anything for a while is cause there's a few
areas we have to listen to. We have to listen to on the right side of your chest. Then we have to move over to the left side of your chest. And there's 4 places that we listen to on the left side of the chest. So unless we do all this, we have to take a few
seconds to actually hear the rhythm, make sure we don't hear a murmur, cause that's what we're listening to, and to make sure the rate is normal, not only in terms of
how fast it's beating, but the rhythm as well. A heartbeat should be boom boom, boom boom, boom boom, it should keep a proper rhythm. If all of a sudden you're getting (sporadic boom) that could be a sign
of atrial fibrillation which is it's own cardiac arrhythmia and all sorts of other issues in which case we would then wanna get extra testing like an EKG, perhaps an echocardiogram, depending on what we're suspecting. But the biggest reason we listen to is for murmurs. When you have something
wrong with the valves of your heart, or actually the chambers of your heart, we hear turbulent flow. Meaning that if you ever hear fluid move through a pipe and the
pipe is nice and clear, you're not gonna hear anything. It's silent. But if something all of a sudden gets in the way and the water
has to move around it, that turbulence creates a sound. That's what we're
listening to in your chest. - Do you have Mitral Valve
Prolapse or anything? Has anyone told you that? - What's a prolapse? - It's one of the valves in the heart is just a little bit floppy. - I just came here to shoot, I came here to shoot like a silly little I've gotta cold and we're gonna just screw around. You're telling me something real? - Yeah but it's nothing. You don't have a murmur or anything. - So Mitral Valve Prolapse, what she's talking about here is technically floppy heart valves. But we're specifically talking about the left side of the heart in between the lower portion, which is the left ventricle, and the left atrium. There is something known
as the Mitral Valve. And it's two little leaflets. And sometimes they do get floppy and they don't sit evenly with each other and they actually prolapse
to the left atrium. And when that happens
is you can have a little bit of leakage of blood that goes into the left atrium
when it's not suppose to. Most of the time, patients are asymptomatic, meaning they don't even know they have it. And we just find it kind of on a routine physical exam and
no treatment is needed. That's why she wasn't so worried about it. [Conan O'Brien] I have a floppy heart. (Laughter) I have a lot of tension with my job. I have a lot of inner rage. I'm Irish Catholic stock. I'm worried we don't do
well in the long run. We're not people that live a long time. - I think it's really important to talk about someone's mental state. Because if they're not in
a healthy mental state, they're gonna take longer to recover from their symptoms. They're gonna have worse
symptoms on average. So I like to get that in the open and see if there's anything we can offer this patient. [Conan O'Brien] A little fatigued. - Those are bad pushups. (Laughter) - What do you think? I'm a pretty good male. - Yeah. Really fantastic. I think maybe, - Look at the camera, please. - Male specimen. - You think maybe I'm a male specimen? (Laughter) [Doctor] This is the
sort of wimpy Sudafed, cause we can't really get the real Sudafed anymore because of the
crystal meth problem. - So I can't make
crystal meth out of this? - Conan O'Brien is a
fantastic male specimen. - He got her to say it! (Laughter) - Conan was awesome for showing this. Showing his medical visit, joking about it, talking about his symptoms. This is how we make changes in the medical community. By opening it up. By being more transparent. By showing doctors have a sense of humor. I have two videos that you have to watch. First is right here, Untold Stories of the ER. This one is fun. And then the one that is really unique is this woman who can
smell Parkinson's Disease. Yeah she can actually smell it. Click on one of these bad boys now. And stay happy and healthy. (elevator music)
Watching this after I took a bunch of NyQuil and while I’m supposed to be asleep feels like perfect timing.