- My patients ask me some
pretty interesting questions, hard questions, but you really
challenge me in the comments and sometimes ask really
weird ones as well. So I'm about to answer
some of your comments. Huge thanks to Grammarly
for sponsoring this episode. Let's get started. Peewoop! Beep Beep I'm A Sheep. I like that name. Beep Beep I'm A Sheep.
(sheep bleats) "I want a dog so badly but I'm allergic. Is there anything I can
do to get rid of that or any other allergy?" There are some treatments that exist where you can actually
slowly work your way out of an allergy, and there
are shots, there are tablets, sublingual tablets that you can do. I'm not an expert in it,
but I know it does exist. It's like a form of immunotherapy. I-Drew, YouTube. "Where does a memory go
when it's forgotten?" (effect blips) Left pinky toe. And if you wanna get it back, you have to only think
about the left pinky. (buzzer buzzes)
I'm not sure. Where does the memory go? It just, the connections
(connections buzzing) aren't there to remember it. But I will say the best
way to remember something that you've forgotten is to
not think about it. (laughs) Because forcing yourself to think about it is sometimes is the
worst thing you can do. That's why taking time off
sometimes yields the best boost to productivity and creativity. And by the way, this
is the one thing that, in terms of like harmful effects of TikTok that people talk about, before we used to have a lot of free time, so we're waiting for the bus, we'd sit with our thoughts
and we'd be introspective. We'd think about stuff,
we'd remember memories. But now we're never alone.
(ominous music) We're always looking at something. We're always being controlled by whatever it is we're watching. So we don't have that free time anymore. And I worry about that. (ominous music) (static buzzing) "If someone has a fever that
we're trying to cool down and you only have one ice pack, where is the best place to put it?" I probably wouldn't want
to cool someone's fever with an ice pack. I can't even imagine. Okay, I'm gonna remove the term fever. If I'm just trying to cool someone down
(thermometer whistles) because they're having acute
hyperthermia or something, I would put it under the armpit. The most surface area
that you're gonna get contact with the skin and it's the most surface area with an important blood vessel, the brachial artery.
(heart thumping) It's right there. So you're getting a lot
of blood circulation moving past that area. I guess you could also do
it in your groin as well. But like same principle. "Why do we have boogers?" Boogers are mucus.
(mucus squelches) Mucus traps unwanted substances. It acts as a barrier. It's really good. We like mucus, (tense music)
unless we have too much and then it becomes a problem.
(bell dings) So that's when we try and clean it out by using nasal saline sprays. "Why don't little kids get
sore from physical activities? Even teenagers get more
sore than little kids." (heavenly music) The beauty of being young. Everything is so ready to
heal, so much circulation. Also, it's smaller, so
less distance for nutrients and blood flow to travel. But the regenerative capacity
of not just a young child but like a baby is incredible. When babies are sick,
(baby crying) the time for them to recover
(bell chimes) sometimes is like this.
(fingers snap) Meaning like on day four,
sometimes they'll look very sick, and then day five, they'll look like nothing
ever happened to them. It's incredible. "If a woman gets into an
accident or falls really hard, could her eggs break, like if you drop the
chicken's egg on the floor?" No, these are not the same types of eggs. Humans have different eggs.
(bell dings) They're called eggs 'cause they're part of
the reproduction cycle. Very different eggs. No
shell on the human egg. "I don't have a 4.0 grade point average. Can I still be a doctor?" Yes, in fact, getting perfect grades doesn't correlate with a better physician. I will say there are
doctors who just get by and finish last in their class,
(record scratches) and those doctors are also called doctors. "I have a sore inside my mouth and it's taking forever to heal. I can't exactly put a Band-Aid
on the inside of my cheek, so would you recommend anything
to help it heal faster?" Look, in general to
help sores heal faster, you want to prevent the irritation. And irritation can be both
chemical and physical. It could be other things, but those are the two main ones that I see happen in my practice. Physical meaning, you know,
you're chewing on your cheek or you keep biting the
same spot of your cheek or your braces are rubbing on your cheek. Chemical could be like you
ate something very spicy or you burned your mouth. That's like more of a
thermal one than chemical. But let's say it was a burn and then you were eating
spicy foods and citrusy foods, that can create longer lasting
inflammation, irritation. But then
(tense music) if you have a wound or a sore that's not healing on the face or mouth, it absolutely needs to be examined because there are cancers of the mouth. There are cancers of the face that happen when you
have a non-healing wound. In fact, on the sun-exposed
areas of the face, if you have a non-healing wound, it's almost to the level of skin cancer until proven otherwise. And mucus membranes, by the way, are some of the fastest
healing parts of our bodies. There's so much circulation there that it actually heals up quite fast. "What's actually happening
when your foot falls asleep?" Either you have suppressed
the nerve's ability to fire so it feels really numb, you cut off circulation to the limb by putting pressure on a blood vessel. 'Cause remember, if you put enough pressure
on a blood vessel, you can choke it so that
the part further away from where you're choking
stops getting circulation. And if it stops getting circulation for a long period of time, those muscles are like,
"Yeah, we ain't working." Those nerves are like, "We ain't working. We're taking a break
until you fill us up." And that's when you feel
the pins and needles and all that good stuff. That mechanism is
actually a good mechanism 'cause it's in place to warn you that hey, you're choking off your foot. You should change position
and get up off the toilet. 'Cause not only are you
choking off the foot, you're probably raising your
risk of getting a hemorrhoid, which is why I tell people
not to TikTok on the toilet. Back to the questions in just a second. But first I want to talk
to you about Grammarly, the AI writing partner that helps professionals
write better and faster. Sometimes I make YouTube videos like these where I see your questions
for the very first time and answer right off the cuff just like I do with my patients. Other times though, I like to write out my videos, like in this animated project where I told stories of mysterious deaths that doctors still can't explain, spooky. Writing a video like that not
only took a lot of research, but a ton of creative effort
to get the words on the page in a way you can truly
enjoy and understand. Fortunately, my writing process has been made so much more
efficient thanks to Grammarly, but it's not a tool to help me write more. It helps me write faster and not just on big
creative projects either. I can use Grammarly to
help me craft emails between my hospital or
messages to my animating team. Its AI features help my
writing feel more compelling either by improving my word choice or actually trimming out the fluff, which I have a bad habit of
doing too often, like right now. I also really appreciate that Grammarly does not share any of my data with other AI language training models. Meaning I can trust that all
my writing and info is private. I'm always in control of my own data. Not only do 96% of users say Grammarly helps craft
more impactful writing, but also, you could sign up right now and download for free using
my link in the description so you too can get started with Grammarly to make your writing better faster. "Is it a big deal if I pee in the shower? It all goes to the same
place down the drain anyway, doesn't it?" There are some positives and
pros to peeing in the shower. It saves time, it saves water. But health risks, there are
some unique situations here. Urine is not fully free of bacteria. A lot of people think it's fully sterile.
(buzzer beeps) It's not really sterile. Remember, it also has to travel
through your urinary tract, which it could pick up some
pathogens across the way. When it exits your body,
(liquid swooshing) it could pick up some pathogens. So there are some potential
sources of bacteria. That being said, there's bacteria all
around us, inside of us. That's not the end of the world. But if you have a urinary
tract infection, and you pee, and you step in it, and you have a cut, could you get an infection? Yes. Pretty low risk. There are also instances of issues of almost conditioning yourself to pee every time you hear running water, like when you're in the shower. (valve squeaks)
So the next time you hear that,
(water swooshes) you're gonna wanna pee and
it's gonna be uncomfortable. There's also instances
of like people saying, "Oh, I should just pee just in case," especially in females where they say, "I want to pee just in
case before I leave." And "Maybe we should
pee in between classes so that I never have
to go to the bathroom." If you do that too often, you can get into the situation
where you train your bladder to send signals for you
to wanna pee very early. You could also cause some
pelvic floor dysfunction. If you're doing it every now and then and you don't make it a a routine thing, I think the risk is pretty low. Pee away. (buzzer beeps)
I don't know. It's a weird question. "Doctor Mike, do you agree with me that your celebrity
doppelganger is Zachary Levi?" I don't know who that is.
- Levi. - Levi, who's that?
- An actor. - Do you think that is? I always thought it was Keanu Reeves. (effect chiming)
"Matrix." "Would it be healthier to
go barefoot all the time like cavemen?" No. (laughs) When you go barefoot all the time, you open up yourself to cuts, scrapes, infections, bone bruises, like there's all sorts of
issues that happen from that. So, no.
(whip cracks) Protect your foots. "Do I need to wash my armpits
if I always wear deodorant?" Absolutely! You wanna
wash off the deodorant. And deodorant is just scent
and a little bit of alcohol to kill some of that bacteria, so it doesn't actually solve the problem. And it could build up in your armpits and then cause blockages, and irritations, and ingrown hairs, and all these problems. So please wash your armpits. In fact, the most
important places to wash, (effect popping)
groin and armpits and the genitals. I guess that is involved in the groin. "If you feel a cold coming on, is there actually anything
you can proactively do to shorten how long you'll be sick? There are so many cold pills
and supplements and hacks and I wonder if anything
makes a difference." The hard answer on this
is outside of the basics, I'm talking about staying
well-hydrated, adequate rest, eating your fruits and vegetables and proteins, lean proteins, there is no
(tense music) magic supplement thing in the pharmacy that's going to do this for you. I say this as someone who
lives that by example. When I'm sick, I desperately
want to get better, but I don't go to the pharmacy and pick up
(buzzer beeps) giant mega doses of vitamin C. I don't go pick up (buzzer beeps)
the zinc tablet that promise miracle cures. Like it just, it's not gonna help. If you're not getting adequate rest, maybe you want take an
over-the-counter medication to lower your fever or
your aches and pains 'cause that will allow you to rest. Maybe you want to take a
medication over the counter that can make you sleepy so
that you get adequate rest. Maybe, maybe, maybe in
some cases that works. But in general, I try to follow the mantra of less intervention unless
it's absolutely proven to help or I'm willing to trade off the negatives. Or if I'm just giving myself something to ease my physical discomfort, (video window pops) there, I kind of open it
up to grandma's cures, chicken noodle soup, a little
cloth pad on the scalp, a little back rub, whatever. Whatever you wanna do, you want to drink ginger tea, (crickets chirping) (mouth slurps) if it's not causing you harm and the risk of it not
working is still zero, by all means go. "Why is my girlfriend always cold? It seems like girls are
always colder than boys." Mm, hard to make that distinction. Having lower muscle mass, lower body mass in general
can make you more cold. Having anemia can predispose
you to being cold, thyroid dysfunction, so
there are certain things, but hard to make that
generalization stick. "What would happen if you
never got rid of a splinter? Would it live in your body forever?" You can become best friends. No. It can, like your body can create a little capsule around
it, almost like an abscess. 'Cause the body does a
good job at walling off from foreign substances. Ideally, you don't want that to happen. 'cause that could become problematic. So you wanna get rid of them. See a medical professional. I don't advise people doing it themselves, unless it's like fully out
there and easy to reach. Even then if it starts
getting red and spreading, the redness starts spreading, you could be at risk for cellulitis. Kayla, YouTube. "Have you ever wanted to quit YouTube?" (tense music) There have been times where I came close to quitting YouTube. One of those times happened to be when the company that helped
me start my YouTube channel, they kind of gave me my initial funding and some resources to start the channel, actually saw us after one year, and I thought we were
doing pretty decently, we picked up 300,000 subscribers, they said, "No.
(tense music) Dr. Mike, we view you as a failure. You turned down some of the sponsorships that we wanted you to take." Some BS vitamin stuff and some clothing brands
that I didn't really like. I didn't wanna lie to my audience. They were so mad at me that they fired us and they labeled us a failure. And in those moments,
you kind of look at it and you say, "Look, I'm a doctor. I really wanna focus on medicine.
Is this the right path?" And ultimately, I wanted to help as
many people as possible using the knowledge that I've picked up over the course of my career. And I thought, if I could do this on a scale such as big as YouTube, I would be a better doctor. I thought I'm a family medicine doctor. When our patients were in
emergency rooms, we went there. When our patients were in
the offices, we went there. They couldn't leave their
homes, we'd do a home visit. Now
(hand thuds) my patients, not literally my patients, lawyers don't come after me, are on social media. So it's time that we (hands
clap) as family medicine doctors take the call to action.
(triumphant music) And I came back and we proved them wrong, and went viral time and time again, and now have almost 12 million
subscribers thanks to you. (knuckles cracking) Is cracking knuckles problematic? Click here to get that answer,
more responding to comments. And as always, stay happy and healthy. (upbeat music)
