, who goes by "Doctor Mike" on social media, is a board-certified family medicine physician at the Atlantic Health System's Overlook Medical Center in Summit, New Jersey. Often he rates accuracy of medical television shows. This week, the focus is a certain well-known social media platform.
Following is a rough transcript:
In honor of the new set and the new sign, let's fact-check some Facebook health posts.
"Reasons not to hold in a fart." I'm not going to judge this one because maybe there are reasons not to hold in a fart. I have to think about this one.
"Puts immense pressure on your lower abdomen." Immense pressure. Can you imagine the human body, so eloquently designed, can go sky diving, scuba diving, can even sometimes survive a sky diving accident, but if you hold in a fart, immense pressure builds up?
"The gas might get reabsorbed into your body and released in the breath." Do they not know that there's a lower GI system and an upper GI system? Can you imagine if farts could travel their way back up through the entire GI system, like how problematic that would be? That would mean just contents are just floating everywhere.
"The buildup of gas might result in an uncontrollable, possibly smelly fart." That is the only one that I might get with. Yeah, holding in a fart might make it more smelly the longer it hangs out there, OK. We fart several times a day on average. In fact, if you eat a lot of vegetables, you're more likely to fart, because beans are good for your heart but they make you fart.
"This is why you should put a slice of onion on the sole of your foot before going to bed." I can't even begin to guess what this claim is going to be. "The unusual method will literally heal you in your sleep." Do you know that, like, sleeping is healing sans onion?
"This method will work wonders overnight." Give me the claims. Hit me with them. "It will clean your blood. Onions contain phosphoric acid which is absorbed into the foot an has a cleansing effect on the blood." God, why am I so angry? Have you ever smelled a sweaty onion? Don't try it at home, kids.
"It might sound strange, but your feet will actually smell better. The onion slice draws all of the chemicals and poisons out of your foot and even cleans the air around you." Who knew that when I have a piece of onion sitting on my kitchen counter it smells like onions, but if I put it on my foot it's a deodorant? Why don't we just put onions in deodorant?
"Share this trick for cleansing the body in a 100% natural way, without actually having to do anything." You can cleanse the body 100%, without having to do anything. You don't even need to shower no more, rub onions on you.
"Did you know, putting a... puttin?" Puttin? They didn't even get the G in there... "Puttin a cabbage leaf on the breast... take a frozen cabbage leaf and stuff it into your bra over the infection." What infection?
These things don't even specify. They're just like, "Do you have an infection? Is it in your lungs? Put it on your breast." "This will do wonders in treating mastitis." OK. Now we've at least localized the infection, that's an infection of the nipple area.
"This cold cabbage leaf does the work of a cold compress on the inflamed breast and provides relief. This remedy is not just good for relieving the tenderness in the breast, but also in the unclogging of the milk duct and flushing out the infection." We have medical treatments. I don't understand.
The medical treatments are not poison, and why cabbage? Do they go through the vegetables and go like, "Which one looks like it's most compatible with a breast?" Then they were like, "Cabbage."
And the real reason this upsets me is because they said this remedy is not only good for relieving the tenderness in the breast, but also in unclogging the milk duct. That's not true. If you want something to drain and become unclogged, you actually have to bring warmth to the area so circulation comes there, and then you could have drainage.
Maybe this could relieve some tenderness because it's a cold object. It doesn't matter that it's cabbage. You could put this headset in the freezer and then put it on your breast and it will achieve the same goal. I'm not recommending you do this, I'm just saying it's the cold that's helping, not the cabbage. Leave the cabbage alone.
"After eating soaked raisins, drinking lukewarm milk on it increases the sperm and removes weakness." The pain. I just don't know any person that's walking around that's like, "God, I have decreased sperm... without checking it... oh, so weak, need some raisins with milk."
"Crystal tip for knee injury or stiffness. Apache tear and smoky quartz work well for issues with the knees. Hold these crystals to the knee for relief." Oh, I thought it was put the crystals into the knee for the relief.
Do you want to diagnose why the knee hurts before giving the treatment? Like can you imagine if a patient came into my office and they were like, "Doctor, this hurts." I'm like "crystal." "But Doctor, I actually had a gunshot wound to that knee." "Apache crystal."
"Don't wear it too low. Tighten the strap for good support." Actually, I very much agree with this, not only about not wearing it too low, but not wearing it on one side. Like students in general come in and a lot of them suffer with scoliosis because their desks are only one-sided so they're constantly leaning like this.
They wear their book bags on one side, so their shoulders are slumped. People wear handbags and they're slumped on that side, so really try and disperse the weight evenly and keep the load higher up. That actually distributes the weight better across your spine. It allows you to be more steady.
"Driving. Don't stoop over while driving, sit erect." This is true, not only for back pain, neck pain, but also for safety with the airbag. You want to maintain a good distance away from the steering wheel in case the airbag comes out.
Obviously you have your seatbelt on, but you also want to have the air bag, like the steering wheel, facing your upper chest so that if it comes out, it kind of comes out to your face and chest. Because if you have it too high up, it can go in like a weird direction.
Oh, "Using your phone. Lift your phone." OK, this is really true. Not only lift your phone up... I mean, I do this. I have a horrible habit of doing this so I can't even call anyone out on this because I need to be called out.
Not only do you not want to keep it here, you also don't want to keep it too close. On average, people are holding phones way closer than they do with like written reading material, and as a result, it's affecting their eyes. You literally hurt your eyes. You strain your eyes by keeping everything so close all the time.
"Scientists find sniffing rosemary can increase memory by 75%." If only I knew this during med school. I would be a better doctor today if I just had some roseberry by my side. I said "roseberry."
"Use of Colgate and Vaseline to get rid of dark spots on skin." No. In general, before you get rid of dark spots, please have your doctor investigate them and make sure they're not a dangerous form of skin cancer, because we can act upon that, not just camouflage it with toothpaste and petroleum jelly.
"Mix bananas, honey, and water. Cough and bronchitis will disappear." My God. I talk to you about green tea and honey all the time because I love it. It actually helps control a nighttime cough. But to say that it's going to make bronchitis disappear? If you have bacteria, serious bacteria causing a bronchitis, like an acute bacterial bronchitis, do you think a little banana and honey and water are going to just make it go away? Do you think it's that simple? Why have the crazy claim? It's unnecessary.
"How about this? Eating one grape Fruit, capitalized, a day for nine months can clear all plaque in one's arteries. This is a hidden truth which big pharma doesn't want you to know. It's also why it says heart medication 'Don't Eat Grape Fruit.' Everything you need is in nature."
Do you know why on some heart medication it says "Don't eat grapefruit"? Because there are certain enzymes that actually interact with grapefruit and grapefruit juice, and as a result, you can have way more medication in your bloodstream, or actually way less medication in your bloodstream, depending on which enzyme we're talking about.
"Eczema?" That is a very fake version of eczema. "One cup milk..." Are they making cereal? Oh, oats, "... two cups oats." Are they going to put blueberries on it? Oh no, they're just going to put a little oat thing, and look, the eczema's gone. Do you know why it's gone in this thing? Because the eczema at the beginning was fake. It was a dried foam.
Oh, smelly foot, OK. A little alcohol, rub your foot in alcohol. Do you realize a bottle of isopropyl alcohol is like a dollar? Why would you clean your feet with the expensive bottle of alcohol when you could do the same with rubbing alcohol for a dollar? Crazy suggestion. Wash your foot.
Do you know why your foot smells or your armpits smell? Because of bacteria farts. The bacteria literally feed on little things of your skin, the oils, and the discharges and all that, and then they release farts. If you rub in alcohol enough, you'll kill all the bacteria, thereby decreasing the scent. But guess what? Soap accomplishes that same goal.
"Greasy hair? Baking soda." Remember when I said you're not a chicken so don't go in a pot? You are not a chicken in a pie. You are not a baking object. Do not bake soda on your head. I have a very bizarre hack for that one. Go in the shower, you wet your hair, and then you get some shampoo, and you make this weird motion like this. You could sing, [SINGING], then you rinse off, no longer greasy. Try it. Yo, it's cray... share this with everyone.
"Drink cow urine to fight virus: Bengal BJP Chief." Urine, stool, those are things you should not be consuming. Why? Because your body got rid of them. It got rid of them because you didn't need them.
Sam (producer, off-camera): That guy is the president of a particular region of India and BJP is the name of his political party. He said drinking cow's urine was a cure for coronavirus.
Varshavski: Wow. Do you think he did a randomized controlled study of that? Do you think he did a study on it at all? Do you think he tried it? How do you do it? That's all I want to know. BuzzFeed medical advice is even more crazy. Click this one to check it out, and other BuzzFeed videos. As always, stay happy and healthy.