spk_0:   0:00
Hello, everybody.

spk_1:   0:01
Hello, everybody. And welcome to the show The big show. The most important and critically came but guessed that is recorded in our car. Today we're in the red studio, which is the quietest of our cars. So it's also the newest. So hopefully the road noise isn't too bad. But we're driving. Ah, southeast at the moment, according to my little fee in my rear view mirror. And today we're here to talk about doo doo doo doo bom bom scuba candy.

spk_0:   0:35
Scuba diver candy.

spk_1:   0:39
You probably What? What do you talk about? Scuba diver candy We'll come back to why is considered scuba diver candy towards the end of the podcast. At least if we remember to come back to it. But what are we talking about? CDO, ephedrine. Pseudoephedrine, little red pills, brand name suit, A fat?

spk_0:   0:58
Yeah, that's most common brand name.

spk_1:   1:01
We're here to talk about the pros and the cons of including pseudoephedrine in your preps. Now, of course, we're gonna start out by saying neither one of us are medical doctors, so we do not give medical advice. So this is offered, as is no warranty. We could just tell you what we do and what we think on it. And some of the stuff is is more of a social political type discussion around this particular medication.

spk_0:   1:35
Not that we're going to talk about the politics.

spk_1:   1:37
No, but we are going to talk about the socio political part of it. Because there is no inflation was part of what the problem of stocking it for prepping is So I don't think we've ever really talked about what it is you specifically d'oh. I mean, we've mentioned it a few times that that your physiologists and a path a physiologist. Yeah. I mean, that's what we make

spk_0:   2:03
of the human body works and does not work as my

spk_1:   2:06
fixing professional causes degree diseases and understanding the diseases and and that kind of stuff. So, yeah, that's what she does. She is, actually. But that doesn't mean she is a medical doctor.

spk_0:   2:20
I am not.

spk_1:   2:20
She's not a medical doctor. She's, ah, not the physiologists thing, okay? She doesn't prescribe except to me. And then it's not with a pad,

spk_0:   2:32
and I just make recommendations and he can't follow him or not, as it gives me look or not depending because you know wife.

spk_1:   2:41
Wife? Yeah. Okay, so she's pretty up on the what's going on inside the body with suit if it and there's a lot of really good things that go on with the drug suit effete and some really gotchas with the drug to

spk_0:   2:59
there are some potent things that go on that can be good things or bad things, depending on situation. Right. But I think they're

spk_1:   3:05
good because I love this when I need it. I very rarely use it because I kind of have to watch my blood pressure.

spk_0:   3:14
And that's one of

spk_1:   3:15
the problems, the problems with it. So

spk_0:   3:16
what do I tell him? What pseudoephedrine is basically about?

spk_1:   3:19
Okay, now we're talking about original pseudoephedrine not to stop the fennel ephedrine Federal. That's a modification all

spk_0:   3:29
which actually doesn't work nearly as well. Pseudoephedrine is pseudo is false. Ephedrine is, ah, plant compound that mimics the hormone adrenaline, also known as epinephrine. And we use a neuro transmitter that is very much like adrenaline and does a lot of the same things of adrenaline. It's called norepinephrine as the driver of our stress response. So epinephrine and norepinephrine in general drive your short term stress response. They constrict blood vessels and they increase your heart rate and they increase your alertness and rise. Raise your blood pressure and a bunch of similar things, and pseudoephedrine has a lot of same effects. It's

spk_1:   4:17
not exactly the same stuff, but it does have a lot of that. You know, if you have a person with a mild case of asthma, this is true. They have a mild case of asthma, and they're starting to have a little bit on average. One of the things you could do it that doesn't involve drugs is to scare the snot out of them real quick. Am I

spk_0:   4:35
wrong? Uh, the stress response also opens The airways and asthma's caused fight by an over constriction of the airways,

spk_1:   4:45
and it causes on adrenaline hit.

spk_0:   4:48
I remember the first time I started to get a little air way construction because I've never had it.

spk_1:   4:54
She wasn't really asked. She's not an asthmatic. No, she had a little condition.

spk_0:   5:00
Yeah, I had a drug problem that kind of triggered it. So here I was. I just finished some hard exercise, and I started to ease and have trouble breathing, and I was having to work to pull air into my chest. And then I thought, OK, relax, Spice. You know what this is? You can tell perfectly well from the signs. You're just having a bit of an asthma attack. Calm down. No, wait. Don't calm down. Freak out about it. Yeah, so yeah. Uh, so what? It's mostly used for in the medical instances, A decongestant? Because when you it reduces secretions from mucous membranes because that's part of the stress response. That's why you get a dry mouth when you get stressed. It's part of it. Um, and it reduces the level of congestion when you constrict the blood vessels to the nasal mucosa up there. So it is a very effective decongestant drug. And that's in fact, why we call it scuba diver candy because the mucous membranes of not only the nasal cavities but also the use station tubes to the ears. Um, the years tend to have a hard time when you're scuba diving because you're going up and down a lot in the water column, and there's a lot of pressure changes, and you have to keep equalizing pressure across your ears. They can get a little irritated and a little swollen, And you absolutely cannot afford to have your Sinuses close up when you're scuba diving because the pressure changes will do very bad things to you.

spk_1:   6:37
You'll end up with a plan.

spk_0:   6:39
Yeah, So you have to keep those passages open, taken some suit, a fed when you're diving helps keep the congestion and the inflammation and the clogging from happening in the first place.

spk_1:   6:51
Okay, And it could be very dangerous to if you're diving and you're using this to I'm gonna use this suit of bed and I'm gonna use the brand name. I'm gonna use the suit up, ed to clear up a congested condition so that I could dive. Bad idea. Absolutely not. Because you could wear off. And if he wears off a depth, you could really hurt yourself. So that's a terrible, terrible terror wife. We

spk_0:   7:17
never use it that whatever

spk_1:   7:18
uses that, ever.

spk_0:   7:19
But we do sometimes use it as a prophylactic when there's gonna be a lot of moving up and down, and we just don't want the We don't want the irritation to start up in the first place. I think it

spk_1:   7:29
would be safe to say that even though we dive in overhead environments, quite a bit caverns, caverns, we're hyper super conservative divers.

spk_0:   7:43
That's part of the thing of not dying when you're in overhead environment. We're

spk_1:   7:47
really super, super, super conservative. We do not stretch the envelope, we're diving. We

spk_0:   7:53
do dangerous things and very safe ways.

spk_1:   7:55
Way do very dangerous, even very, very safe ways. So but this is such a great tool for so many things,

spk_0:   8:06
and we do keep some ourselves if we

spk_1:   8:08
don't. But there's a reason there's a couple of real kicker's great

spk_0:   8:15
maybe three come to mind, right? One is, since it activates the stress response, it increases both alertness and anxiety, Right? So sleep is not really a thing if you're taking a bunch of suit. If Ed, if you're prone to anxiety and panic attacks, they'll help you get there

spk_1:   8:33
right. And, of course, when you're diving, the last thing you want to do, the very last thing you want to do is have a panic attack. Panic attacks kill you at depth quicker than anything else.

spk_0:   8:45
They can kill you in any emergency situation quicker than anything else. But diving. I wasn't particularly thinking about diving. I was thinking about general people who have are prone to panic attacks when they're in stressful when life gets stressful. But

spk_1:   8:58
in fact, that his daddy is the reason I took up diving in the first place because she wanted to die, which is fine. But I just did not trust the random stranger on a boat that she would be diving as with because I don't know that person. I don't know there, you know, we have friends who would live with, but we know them. We know that they are calm. We know that they're good divers. We know that they follow the same rules that we do. Um, we could tell a story. And I don't know if it's worth telling the story about the Hawaii

spk_0:   9:33
bone and not here.

spk_1:   9:34
Okay. Something. A little story about the white boat where we got involved with a panic diver. Fortunately, it wasn't one of our buddies. And boy, let me tell you what. This is something you don't wanna have. But you see, people panic. And every day you see people I've seen people have panic panic, Christmas shopping, and it was full blown panic eyes wide panic by the inability to buy a toy for their child. It was panic rial. I mean, to sweat the whole thing. And I was like, Wow! Okay,

spk_0:   10:13
so that's one of the downsides, Kicker One kind Attention. Hypertension tends to raise blood pressure. So if you tend to have high blood pressure problems suit If Ed is maybe not to go to answer for de Congestion. And the third is Big Brother. Frankly, because pseudoephedrine is a starting material for making Met amphetamines, speed, meth, whatever you wanna call it. And for years, it's been more than a decade now. When I was this innocent little lamb who didn't know about the drug problem, I remember going to a really sketchy flea market type thing we have in our area seeing of suit. If ed

spk_1:   11:02
here we have an article

spk_0:   11:03
and I guessed they had just bought out a A shipment like a truck and spilled or something, and they got the shipment for cheap been I couldn't imagine what anybody wanted with that much suit. If Ed well, they were supplying the local meth, meth, the producers and methods of big thing in rural areas because you need the pseudoephedrine and you need ammonia and people appearing is a giant tanks of ammonia as fertilizer, and they have the space to put a stinky old meth lab where the neighbors won't notice. So meth production is a problem in rural areas. Well, because it is such a problem that they have tried to stop the problem by can't really stop the using The ammonia is fertilizer thing, so instead, they've worked on the other end of it and tried to throttle the pseudoephedrine supply. So it's now extremely hard to get. You have to ah, register and show your I. D s when you get it. In some places, you have to have a prescription to get it, and they absolutely keep a record of who buys how much and from where. And different stores will compare and see who's stocking up on the stuff right there that makes you a suspected meth dealer are pretty sir.

spk_1:   12:16
Look, if I go to buy the stuff and I go into my local Sam's Club, which has a really good price on it, so I'm just letting you know I go to my Sam's Club, I buy the maximum legal amount because I don't want to do this again. We don't go through very much of the stuff, so I'll do this very often. Way really excelled way like to have some of this in stock, and so I go in. There they take, they run my driver's license and that goes into a database. And I can't buy meth there or anywhere else.

spk_0:   12:50
Can't buy pseudo ephedrine.

spk_1:   12:51
Pseudoephedrine. So you got me thinking about Mass. I have my mother. Ah, like any

spk_0:   12:58
time I want to buy drugs produced in a bathtub by people who haven't graduated high school, I'll jump right on that

spk_1:   13:05
I would. I have bought exactly as much methods. I want to. Exactly. Absolutely. And if anybody were to look at me, you could tell this is a person who does not use math. Uh, I have some friends who were ex tweakers, and I mean clean now clean up. Quite clean. In fact,

spk_0:   13:27
they moved far away from the place where they were tweakers very wisely, because avoiding triggers of known use is a great way to help yourself stay clean

spk_1:   13:38
and effective, turned their lives around there, become pillars of the community Yada, yada, yada. Ah, but you know, and they the stories they tell

spk_0:   13:46
in the pictures from when they were tweaking

spk_1:   13:48
long. Gosh, the drug, the arrest pictures. See, they keep their arrest pictures just to remind themselves that we don't want to be here. And they're literally pillars of the community now. Yeah, and everybody knows the story. They told the story. You told it to everybody so that, you know, it's just like, Look, this is Dude. We're just normal people in this can happen to

spk_0:   14:09
it just makes us think they're more awesome for how they've turned their lives around

spk_1:   14:13
and they really have. But

spk_0:   14:15
anyway, we've seen what it can do, and we're not interested. But that is why pseudoephedrine is so hard to buy. And if you buy a bunch of it, you're going to end up in federal databases and you might end up on a watch list for meth production or something on those lines. Right? So that was really one of the nature downhill

spk_1:   14:32
deal to me. I'd rather have the drug because I I don't really I'm on every federal list there is, I'm sure by now for those

spk_0:   14:41
gun sales. What? Because you've bought guns,

spk_1:   14:45
right? Not for gun sales. I don't sell guns.

spk_0:   14:47
Yeah, sales of guns to you is what I was thinking there.

spk_1:   14:51
I usually trade my guns in its gun shop, even though it's not quite as good a deal is a private sale. I don't want to deal with that private sale thing. I really know, you know, I'll sell it to a gun shop and we'll go through the thing. I don't want to deal with private sales. I don't wanna have a gun coming back on me that I sold to the sky. And he I have no interest in that. None. So I'll take. I'll take a little bit of a hit when it's time to move on from a gun. I'll take guns and trading and sell them at the gun shop in the brother. But, you know, because I don't I really don't wanna do that. So But I'm in databases. I buy guns and they say they don't keep track of that. Um, I know they do keep track of the suit that, though absolutely

spk_0:   15:32
that's the whole point. So somebody can't buy a maximum amount. One store and then go to another and then go to another. That's why they're doing it, and they admit that's why they're doing it.

spk_1:   15:43
So So it's a plus. It's a mice. Now we need to talk about a couple of other things

spk_0:   15:49
before we leave that idea.

spk_1:   15:50
We're not really leaving that idea.

spk_0:   15:51
Okay, if if people know you've got a whole bunch of pseudo ephedrine, you are a robbery target because people who are drug producers will steal it if they

spk_1:   16:00
absolutely. And also if they know that you've had surgery recently, though, some people are arguing for Target you for the opium

spk_0:   16:08
maxi code owns

spk_1:   16:09
Hap. It's happening around us all the time. People are targeting recent surgery patients.

spk_0:   16:15
I've been listening to a book on this, and one guy got hooked when he started working for a company that helped people moved to senior living. And, of course, the seniors had a bunch of old prescriptions lying around, and if it was a current prescription, they just left a few pills. But if it was an old prescription, they would just take the whole bottle and the person would never notice because they'd forgotten about it and other people. Then they moved on to robbing people who they knew had picked up prescriptions lately.

spk_1:   16:46
Okay, we're gonna I'm just gonna throw this out here. If you have old drugs that you really need to get rid of, Don't flush him. Don't throw them away. Find out where the no questions asked. Drug drop off places in your community and the every community. And we have one. Everybody has one with us. It's in the courthouse. It's an old mailbox, every they've repurposed. You walk in there, you drop it in the mailbox and you got

spk_0:   17:10
Ellen sent cars. Way

spk_1:   17:12
are still have our prescription labels. That's not

spk_0:   17:14
that's not much of a secret.

spk_1:   17:16
We're fooling anybody. But, you know, don't leave old Oprah opioids laying around because they, first of all, some of them get really dangerous with age. So they

spk_0:   17:25
do not age well,

spk_1:   17:26
they do not age well, so don't

spk_0:   17:28
keep him in case you need him later. Not very long at all,

spk_1:   17:32
but yeah, you see a five year old bottle of anything pitched that if it's an opioid, I don't care what it is. Pitch it. It's not safe anymore. Although light a cane just loses effectiveness.

spk_0:   17:46
Many drugs just lose effectiveness. But it's

spk_1:   17:49
not about really bad. Yeah, they don't know which one. So I don't think they go away. I don't want to make myself more of a robbery targets and already am so

spk_0:   17:59
that and I don't want supply those people. That's a bad idea.

spk_1:   18:02
Okay, now let's take a look at similar similar products. First, you've got the S E product. That's what would be p P. That's right. The P E products

spk_0:   18:15
suited fed P E. It's not safe. And

spk_1:   18:17
then there's generic P E. Because soon offenses drugs. It's been around forever, and so is cottage. It's generic.

spk_0:   18:24
So what they do is they stick a fennel group onto the main molecule to make fennel ephedrine instead of pseudoephedrine. Ah, pretty much destroys most of its effectiveness, but makes it no longer a substrate for methamphetamine production. And they sell it because it kind of works. Or so for the first half hour or so, and then you can just again. So not a fan.

spk_1:   18:48
Yeah, and this is another one that works. Similar to that is the newer formula. This is a different truck, but I'm just gonna since worked on the new or formulation of the Afrin spray. And they got to formulations the old spray and the news spread. The new spray is garbage. It does not work. I mean, work for a few minutes, and then it comes right back

spk_0:   19:18
because I believe it's a fennel of federal too.

spk_1:   19:20
Yeah, it just doesn't have any lasting paradigm. The old sprang is another one of these, Man,

spk_0:   19:26
that's enough gasoline.

spk_1:   19:28
You take that stuff and it will clear up your congestion. But it has. Ah, kid, Big kicker on it has a huge kicker, Oxy.

spk_0:   19:38
Matassa Lien is highly effective, but you adapt to it very quickly. You get used to the outside source and you become unable to perform the same functions with your own mechanisms. Which means you take that stuff for a week and the cold is gone. So you go off it and you clog up like you're never gonna breathe again. And you stay that way for two weeks until your systems re adapt its rebound

spk_1:   20:06
rebound congestion. I had this once when I was a kid because I just started and so I literally put it kept putting off the day and putting off the day. I take it every day, so I got basically hooked on the stop. Uh, that's not where you want to pay. You really don't when you haven't and squirt that stuff in your nose three or four times a day to seek a breeze? No, it turns your nose, your nose turned and, uh,

spk_0:   20:31
it'll tear up your nasal mucosa. You're a lot more prone to get infections from that route. Just get that nasty rebound congestion, will you? So and there's no way basically around that rebound congestion that I've ever heard of.

spk_1:   20:43
Uh, no, there isn't. I

spk_0:   20:45
want that stuff for about 31 dose a day, three days in a row, and then I am done. No matter how we haven't, I understand we

spk_1:   20:51
have a firm firm rule on that. If your Europe about during the day other stuff ofwork, other stuff will work if you're open about. But sometimes at night, if you just can't sleep in your so clogged, that's when we'll take it. But we have a firm three day rule, and we're only taking it one today, to which helps you know they you know it's a survey, but we don't want that. Really. Oh, we really don't want everybody. And sometimes you got a cold and you're like, going into the day three going Oh, yeah. 00 no. But like a medical don't last that much longer When

spk_0:   21:29
I go there. That's when I actually go to the suit of Fed. Yes, and accept the fact that I'm not going to sleep very well because breathing and not sleep is better than not sleeping because you're not breathing.

spk_1:   21:40
You could use the spice or the salty mixture of it. You're

spk_0:   21:45
Yeah, he takes the Benadryl, die hide diphenhydramine with

spk_1:   21:54
you know what? You know what? A lot of horrible for me, but actual What happens though I get some of the weirdest dreams when I do that. So you would not believe the dreams I get when I'm on that stuff.

spk_0:   22:08
The reason he does this is because he's congested and can't fall asleep. And I fall asleep and can't see what the heck is doing. What? He gets up and grabs the second drug.

spk_1:   22:18
What was she has suggested? Oh, this is how wary this is just hilarious. It happened to me. Oh, about three weeks ago, she was congested, that she was snoring so loud she will curse up, up, and she should turn the lower looks at me. Like what? What? What? So you are snoring so loud I cannot sleep. But I'm like, honey, I'm sitting here reading a book. I'm sitting here reading a book. I am not sleeping that way. You that was snoring so loud you woke yourself up. I

spk_0:   22:58
the entire incident Because

spk_1:   22:59
it brings us to our other favorite tool, which I love, which is a great tool because it is non drug.

spk_0:   23:08
Oh, yeah. The nasal strips

spk_1:   23:09
of nasal strips.

spk_0:   23:12
Those ah, they've got a bendy piece of metal in them and a band aid over the top. You attached Thea Band aid to the sides of your nose. The bendy metal thing wants to flatten out.

spk_1:   23:23
Not really metal, but plastic. And

spk_0:   23:26
some of them have been metal. The 1st 1 on your part was metal anyway. Thes air, plastic. Fine, whatever. But the basic idea is the spring iness of the little bar pulls Thea near it. Neri's decided the nostrils apart and they help you breathe without doing a dang thing drug wise.

spk_1:   23:45
Right now. I got a big nose. I actually used two of these things, and I I set one low on the nose, one high on the nose. The other thing I do, and I make sure because I have. I don't say I'm oily skin, but I have skin that does pretty some oil. Um, if you have dry skin, this is probably not a problem. I'm not like, super duper like ridiculously oily, but minus more oily than some. So I always make sure that I put them on fresh out of the shower and scrub the heck out of my facial area before I put on and they stick like super to my nose. It just opens them up.

spk_0:   24:23
That's not true. He could take it off in the morning and still have skin on his nose, but they really stick well enough

spk_1:   24:29
to stick.

spk_0:   24:30
And that's important

spk_1:   24:31
because sometimes, though, if you don't have their oil off your nose, three

spk_0:   24:35
Only real caution about these guys is they are not a long term prep item. There they are a rotating prep because they don't want way. It's bad, Yeah, but we just cycle through him. And that's our goatee thing when we're having congestion issues

spk_1:   24:49
because it's not drugs and every non drug is good. Yeah, so

spk_0:   24:56
good. Safe answer suit If Ed can be beautiful stuff, but it's got its down sides. It's your call, obviously. But that's some information. Help you make the decision

spk_1:   25:07
and one thing on the throne there, because this is no longer commonly available. But there was another thing that does work great for congestion. But is it something is no longer available? It was that diet, that ephedra diet pill stuff. You used to have the Metabolife original formula Metabolife that you know you had people. It's still in the guy because they're just so lit up on this stuff.

spk_0:   25:34
Those are uppers. There's just straight up, but they do. Uppers cleared ages, they decongest you. They raise your blood pressure. That's why they took him off. The market is showing people they would cause sudden cardiac death in some people, and they would cause blood pressure spikes and actually had pretension, episodes and others.

spk_1:   25:53
It was another thing where, you know, they were actually pretty safe when taken as directed, but people didn't take him was directed. They were waiting.

spk_0:   26:02
No, actually, they came out with a combination with another drug that was nasty,

spk_1:   26:07
A depth of thing. No, that's that's not what I'm talking about. That was just a really horrible thing I'm talking about. Just the straight ephedra was actually pretty safe if you took it exactly as directed and exactly as director was the maximum dose. They started people at their Max dose. Of course, people double it up. There you go.

spk_0:   26:29
A problem with that as well, is ephedra is not a A lab. Pretty Strug. Ephedra is an herbal supplement, so they're really Jones. You don't know how much you were getting, particularly if you bought from a reputable company. They would do a pretty good job of standardizing how much was in each dose. If you bought from a company that made it on the cheap, you got no idea what's in there. Usually it's too little. Sometimes it's too much. Sometimes it's additional stuff that's not on the label. It's a mystery Grab bag. If you buy poor quality herbal supplements,

spk_1:   27:02
right. And this is one of the things that I think you know. We'll come back to some awesome or when we talk about herbal supplements. But this is one of the things we're we're we're big fans of Find a brand that you really trust that you find useful and stick with that brand. And that brand doesn't necessarily have to be the super PNC. Ridiculous. We Hy Vee is our big grocery store in our area, and the high V herbal supplements, whoever they get them from a really good job.

spk_0:   27:33
They seemed to be

spk_1:   27:34
reputable. They seem to be reputable, and they're one of the cheapest ones out there, so it doesn't, you know, but we're kind of big fans of Once you find something that works for you, stick with that brand because you know the dose ing, you know, And if it's a reputable company, they're going to be pretty consistent. How they pretty something. Some of these herbal supplements are really medically potent, and you want to be getting the amount you expect

spk_0:   28:03
and the ingredients you expect every cent of that. It's more common to have less stuff than you expect, and some of the things will have none of the thing effectively. No amount of the effective ingredient So you're just paying up for a placebo. But in some cases, the companies want their product to work. Really great. So they stuff in Maur and they stuff in additional ingredients to make it be really powerful. But then you're every drug is a poison and sufficient concentration, and that's what you run into. And even

spk_1:   28:39
though these are marketed as drugs, your

spk_0:   28:44
physiology thinks they are. They do. And, yes, some of the

spk_1:   28:48
stuff really, really, really works. But that could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending upon the dosage. So just something to keep in mind. Okay, I think we're gonna put this one to bed. And, uh so good bye for now,

spk_0:   29:02
do you?