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Maggots: Good For Healing Wounds, Turns Out · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from house stuff Works
0:05
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:14
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and uh no one, no
0:18
Speaker 1: one else is in here with us yet again, because
0:21
Speaker 1: we've graduated to the point where we don't even need
0:23
Speaker 1: a producer. We need somebody who presses record and leaves.
0:27
Speaker 1: That's it. Because we're pros. Yep, not p R O
0:32
Speaker 1: s E. P r O S that's right, we're not.
0:35
Speaker 1: But we are prosaic, yes, but definitely not p r
0:38
Speaker 1: O apostrophe es. Very few things drive me crazier than that,
0:41
Speaker 1: And I know it's stupid and pedantic, but to see,
0:44
Speaker 1: like somebody take out a huge billboard or something and
0:48
Speaker 1: so a word has an apostrophe. That shouldn't pros. People say, like,
0:53
Speaker 1: leave it to the pros and they'll put an apostrophe. Yes,
0:56
Speaker 1: and it's it's that graphic designer should be, you know,
1:00
Speaker 1: doctor half a day's paying maybe bucks. Something we want
1:05
Speaker 1: to issue and you probably would get this from the
1:08
Speaker 1: title of the episode, but we want to issue a
1:10
Speaker 1: meal warning. Oh good thinking, because we've gotten complaints in
1:14
Speaker 1: the past when people are eating and get sick listening
1:16
Speaker 1: to some of these. Yeah, this would do it possibly
1:19
Speaker 1: for some people. I was fine. I ate a running
1:23
Speaker 1: yolk egg sandwich while I was right. It didn't bother me,
1:28
Speaker 1: but I could totally see how it could be any people.
1:30
Speaker 1: I also want to say, um, if it comes up,
1:33
Speaker 1: do not go Google image search wound sloth. Well, I
1:38
Speaker 1: just put do not Google image search maggot therapy at all. Okay, sure,
1:42
Speaker 1: but definitely stay away from wound sloth s l o
1:46
Speaker 1: U g h. Yeah wow, and definitely don't look at
1:52
Speaker 1: wound slough while you're eating. Yeah. Okay, so that's all
1:56
Speaker 1: out of the way. Yes, I predict we're going to
1:58
Speaker 1: be kind of excited about this one. I'm feeling a
2:00
Speaker 1: little pumped about it. Well, we did cover in uh
2:03
Speaker 1: tin Bizarre medical Treatments uh leech therapy, which is still
2:08
Speaker 1: being used, and I'm surprised this wasn't in that article.
2:10
Speaker 1: To be honest, I am as well. But this gets
2:13
Speaker 1: its own special deal, and well it should actually because
2:16
Speaker 1: it's a pretty amazing thing. Um, we're talking about maggot therapy.
2:22
Speaker 1: Yes it is so, or they really or is that
2:25
Speaker 1: a name? Well, it's a band name. To end all
2:28
Speaker 1: band names. There probably wasn a band name that. So
2:30
Speaker 1: there's it's called maggot therapy, maggot dibridement therapy, larval therapy,
2:35
Speaker 1: or bio. There's another one called I think like bio
2:41
Speaker 1: biodebridements or therapeutic wound miasses. Yeah, and that's basically all
2:50
Speaker 1: the all of them, no matter what you call it,
2:52
Speaker 1: no matter how you church it up. It is the
2:55
Speaker 1: application of live maggots fly larva to purposefully to an
3:01
Speaker 1: open wound in order to help that wound heal faster. Yeah,
3:06
Speaker 1: and better and cleaner and all that good stuff everything.
3:10
Speaker 1: Daft Punk said, Oh yeah, you know, should we talk
3:15
Speaker 1: about some of the history of this stuff. Let's just
3:18
Speaker 1: say that one more time. Okay. Maggot de bridemant therapy
3:22
Speaker 1: is taking live maggots and putting them in an open
3:26
Speaker 1: wound on a human being or an animal. It's used
3:28
Speaker 1: in veterinary medicine as well, wrapping it up tight and
3:32
Speaker 1: letting them just eat the dead and dying flesh of
3:34
Speaker 1: that wound while you get your foot tickled. Okay, I
3:39
Speaker 1: would be so skiped out by this. I just wanted
3:41
Speaker 1: to make sure that everybody knows exactly what we're talking about, right,
3:44
Speaker 1: and goodbye to everyone everyone who fainted. Okay, yeah, let's
3:49
Speaker 1: talk about the history, chuck, because this is um, this
3:51
Speaker 1: is in use today, but it's actually pretty old. Yeah,
3:55
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's some say it's an even an
3:57
Speaker 1: ancient tradition like in place is like Burma in Central
4:01
Speaker 1: America with the Mayans. Um, they were smart enough to
4:05
Speaker 1: know that maggots do a pretty good job of consuming
4:08
Speaker 1: human flesh. Uh, And it can be used for good
4:12
Speaker 1: in that regard. Yeah, at some point, I guess healer's noticed,
4:15
Speaker 1: like y, people who had maggots in their wounds tended
4:18
Speaker 1: to have wounds heal Uh. And actually, as far as
4:21
Speaker 1: the Western literature goes, that's exactly how UM maggot therapy
4:25
Speaker 1: first finds its way, first crawls into the medical literature
4:31
Speaker 1: is from a French surgeon named Ambro Ambras Pore. Yeah,
4:38
Speaker 1: but how would you say, I don't know, I don't
4:40
Speaker 1: speak French Ambras even though it doesn't have the little
4:45
Speaker 1: what is that an accent? Yeah, it's just the e.
4:49
Speaker 1: But he was a sixteenth century surgeon and he noticed that, um,
4:54
Speaker 1: that people didn't necessarily fall over dead if there was
4:58
Speaker 1: a maggot in the wound. Yeah. He was a first
5:00
Speaker 1: doctor to actually come out and say, you know, I
5:03
Speaker 1: had this patient got a big skull wound, and unbeknownst
5:07
Speaker 1: to me, there were maggots in there. I saw them
5:09
Speaker 1: crawling out one day and even though they had a
5:11
Speaker 1: lot of bone. Um, the guy was great. He healed
5:15
Speaker 1: like he lost a hand sized slab of skull and
5:19
Speaker 1: he lived. And I think it might have something to
5:22
Speaker 1: do with the maggots. Yeah, and he presumably wore a
5:24
Speaker 1: helmet for the rest of his life. Probably he had
5:26
Speaker 1: a probably big soft skull there. Uh. That was followed
5:31
Speaker 1: in uh with the mid seventeen hundreds by another Frenchy baron,
5:37
Speaker 1: Dominique Jean Laoie Uh, and he said, you know what,
5:43
Speaker 1: on this Egyptian expedition, Uh, these blue fly maggots are
5:47
Speaker 1: actually doing the right thing and helping us out. So
5:51
Speaker 1: it's almost like these doctors just noticed this exactly and
5:55
Speaker 1: it meant enough to him that they were like, I
5:57
Speaker 1: should probably write this down. This is gonna be my
6:00
Speaker 1: contribution to medical history of the history of science right there. Um.
6:05
Speaker 1: So it wasn't until the uh, I guess the Civil
6:09
Speaker 1: War that a doctor actually said I'm going to purposefully
6:12
Speaker 1: put maggots in a wound and see what happens. And
6:16
Speaker 1: that doctor was John Forney Zacharias. He probably didn't tell
6:19
Speaker 1: his patient that. I think probably that he was just like,
6:22
Speaker 1: just bite down on this brooms and look the other way.
6:25
Speaker 1: Do you want to lose your foot or do you
6:26
Speaker 1: want to try something really weird? Well, supposedly in studies
6:31
Speaker 1: of people, modern patients who are offered this therapy say
6:34
Speaker 1: yes to it. Well, yeah, because I think that's what
6:36
Speaker 1: it comes down to you. It's a last resort. Basically,
6:39
Speaker 1: it's not the first thing they offer, not necessarily. Um So, anyway,
6:43
Speaker 1: doctor Zacharias um Hey had a great quote. He said,
6:47
Speaker 1: during my service in the hospital at Danville, Virginia, I
6:50
Speaker 1: first used maggots to remove the decayed tissue in Hospital
6:54
Speaker 1: Gang Green, and with my eminent satisfaction, in a single day,
6:58
Speaker 1: they would clean a wound much better than any agents
7:00
Speaker 1: we had at our command. I used them afterwards at
7:03
Speaker 1: various places. I am sure I saved many lives by
7:05
Speaker 1: their use escape septicemia and had rapid recoveries period. End quote.
7:11
Speaker 1: Pretty great. Yeah, So he was a huge believer and
7:14
Speaker 1: not just a passive observer like people who came before him.
7:17
Speaker 1: He said, yeah, I put maggots on wounds and it helps,
7:20
Speaker 1: that's right. And uh, people experimented with it for a
7:23
Speaker 1: little while until um, a guy named Louis Pasteur and
7:27
Speaker 1: Robert Coke came along, Uh, microbiologists and germ theorists that
7:32
Speaker 1: basically said, you know this, this is disgusting. We might
7:37
Speaker 1: want to not do this. Yeah, because they're dirty. Yeah, yeah,
7:40
Speaker 1: And it's true maggots naturally in the wild carry lots
7:44
Speaker 1: of pathogens with them that um can infect us in
7:47
Speaker 1: other ways, can make a wound worse, can actually kill you.
7:50
Speaker 1: So this the idea behind germ theory as far as
7:52
Speaker 1: maggots goes right. But um, it seems like there's this
7:58
Speaker 1: long history of necessity and discussed with maggot therapy that
8:03
Speaker 1: kind of wayne ebbs and flows right, and necessity rears
8:07
Speaker 1: its head on the battlefield. It did in the Civil War,
8:09
Speaker 1: and it also did in World War One. There was
8:12
Speaker 1: a surgeon um named William S. Baer, and he was
8:16
Speaker 1: working on the front lines in France, and he used
8:19
Speaker 1: maggots on stomach wounds and open fractures and he found,
8:24
Speaker 1: to his great satisfaction, just like Dr Zacharias and the
8:27
Speaker 1: other before him, that this stuff actually worked. Yeah, and
8:30
Speaker 1: he actually said, you know what, I have some further advancements. UM,
8:34
Speaker 1: maybe we should put a bandage over this thing so
8:37
Speaker 1: it doesn't completely discussed the patient. Uh, and let me
8:41
Speaker 1: UM put bandages around the wound so they don't start
8:46
Speaker 1: creeping onto the healthy flesh and doing damage or just
8:49
Speaker 1: itching you or creeping you out further right exactly, UM,
8:52
Speaker 1: which are still in use today. These techniques. He also
8:55
Speaker 1: pioneered another huge technique, and this is after the war
8:58
Speaker 1: was over. Ten years later, when he was back at
9:01
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins UM. He he pioneered another really important technique,
9:05
Speaker 1: and that was using sterilized UM maggots. Like germ free maggots,
9:10
Speaker 1: they were raised as eggs in a sterile environment, and
9:14
Speaker 1: so when they were introduced to the wounds, they weren't
9:16
Speaker 1: carrying these pathogens anymore. And he found this is the jackpot.
9:21
Speaker 1: Now you can use maggots from now on. That's right.
9:24
Speaker 1: And there was a big boom uh in the thirties
9:26
Speaker 1: up until the mid nineteen forties. Uh, three hundred more
9:30
Speaker 1: than three hundred American hospitals. Uh, we're using maggot treatment,
9:34
Speaker 1: maggot therapy. And then in uh, antiseptics came along, or
9:40
Speaker 1: you know, new antiseptics, and they said, you know what,
9:42
Speaker 1: maybe there was another lull in the use of maggot.
9:44
Speaker 1: They right, necessity didn't didn't spur this stuff, and it
9:48
Speaker 1: was they went back to just being gross again. There
9:50
Speaker 1: was a guy UM who by the eighties wrote what
9:53
Speaker 1: what this one article calls the majority opinion. Fortunately, maggot
9:57
Speaker 1: therapy is now relegated to a historical backwater of interest,
10:01
Speaker 1: more for its bizarre nature than its effect on the
10:03
Speaker 1: course of medical science. A therapy the demise of which
10:06
Speaker 1: no one is likely to mourn. That's just that kind
10:10
Speaker 1: of Western medicine hubris, where like we can do anything
10:14
Speaker 1: except everything, you know, that's right. And in the nineteen nineties,
10:21
Speaker 1: UM a dude named Ronald Sherman and Edward Pector basically
10:26
Speaker 1: champion the technique again and kind of brought it into
10:31
Speaker 1: the modern age. Yeah, and still very much is UM.
10:34
Speaker 1: Ronald Sherman is one of the first, i think, to
10:38
Speaker 1: receive a license to produce sterile maggots for use as
10:43
Speaker 1: medical devices. Um. And there's another guy over in uh
10:48
Speaker 1: the UK named John Church um who uh who brought
10:53
Speaker 1: the maggot their maggot therapy into the four So it
10:58
Speaker 1: was an ancient thing, it was. It's found to be disgusting,
11:02
Speaker 1: it's found to be useful, it's found to be disgusting.
11:04
Speaker 1: It's it's found ways you can make it better. It's
11:08
Speaker 1: found to be disgusting. And then now that this idea
11:11
Speaker 1: of complimentary medicine is is kind of regaining some traction again. Um,
11:16
Speaker 1: I think it's here to stay, though I think so too,
11:19
Speaker 1: unless someone comes along in ten years is you know
11:21
Speaker 1: what it's disgusting, well, you know the chuck. I mean
11:24
Speaker 1: probably what we're seeing is the next thing that will
11:26
Speaker 1: happen is there will be some huge leap, some huge
11:28
Speaker 1: development in science, and science will get its tackles up
11:31
Speaker 1: again and great about itself and we don't need any
11:34
Speaker 1: of that stupid nastiness. And then we'll find that Nope,
11:38
Speaker 1: you still can't beat good old fashioned maggots. And that's
11:41
Speaker 1: that should be the title of this thing. You can't
11:43
Speaker 1: beat good old fashioned maggots for healing a wound that
11:46
Speaker 1: won't heal otherwise it's a great title. So you want
11:49
Speaker 1: to take a break. Uh, yeah, let's do it, and
11:51
Speaker 1: we'll go um treat our own wounds and we'll be
11:54
Speaker 1: back shortly. All right, Let's talk about diabetes for a second. Yeah,
12:29
Speaker 1: more than twenty three million Americans are affected with diabetes.
12:34
Speaker 1: And one thing that can happen, uh is nerve damage,
12:38
Speaker 1: especially in the extremities the hands and feet and the
12:41
Speaker 1: toes and the and the fingers. Your blood vessels become
12:45
Speaker 1: hard and they don't circulate the blood like you need.
12:48
Speaker 1: That can lead to open sores called ulcers, which can
12:52
Speaker 1: become infections, which can spread to nearby bone, which can
12:55
Speaker 1: lead to amputation. Yeah. It all this is just from
12:59
Speaker 1: a long exposure to high levels of blood sugar and
13:02
Speaker 1: they're not sure how it can do it. But yeah,
13:04
Speaker 1: the blood, the blood vessels not helping pump blood very well,
13:08
Speaker 1: get nutrients, or your tissue can die. But also that neuropathy,
13:11
Speaker 1: that dead and nerve cell um that actually makes it
13:15
Speaker 1: hard for you to notice. If you have like a
13:18
Speaker 1: really bad ulcer on the bottom of your foot, you
13:21
Speaker 1: can't feel it and so you don't get treatment early enough,
13:23
Speaker 1: so it can get an infection can get out of
13:25
Speaker 1: hand and when it spreads to bone that's called osteomyelitis.
13:30
Speaker 1: That's problematic because that very quickly will lead to an amputation.
13:34
Speaker 1: And there's some pretty shocking stats here from this article
13:38
Speaker 1: that Tom wrote. Um about this sheave jam Yeah nice,
13:42
Speaker 1: it's yeah for sure, Um. But about amputations from diabetes. Yes,
13:47
Speaker 1: seventy thousand to foot and leg amputations each year in
13:51
Speaker 1: the United States alone, and uh they say around the world,
13:55
Speaker 1: they estimate every thirty seconds someone gets a limb cut
13:58
Speaker 1: off because of diabetes. Yeah, that's sad, Yeah, it really is,
14:02
Speaker 1: and we should We will do one on diabetes for sure.
14:05
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm surprised we haven't already. Um. But the
14:09
Speaker 1: so amputation is used to halt the progress of an infection,
14:17
Speaker 1: and that's usually the last resort. But what's what Tom
14:20
Speaker 1: points out is that there are plenty of doctors around
14:23
Speaker 1: the world I imagine that aren't aware that you can
14:27
Speaker 1: use maggots or have never done it before. And if
14:30
Speaker 1: you are facing an amputation from say like a wound,
14:34
Speaker 1: a persistent wound, a chronic wound that won't heal, um,
14:37
Speaker 1: you may want to suggest maggots to your doctor. You
14:40
Speaker 1: may have to actually take this the the initiative on
14:43
Speaker 1: this one, and say, let's make sure the amputation is
14:47
Speaker 1: the absolute last resort. Let's see if we can put
14:49
Speaker 1: one more resort in there before then. I'm willing to
14:51
Speaker 1: let maggots crawl inside my body in this wound is
14:54
Speaker 1: open wound if you're willing to apply them. And they like.
15:00
Speaker 1: Doctors love hearing when patients suggest treatments. Oh, they do.
15:04
Speaker 1: They love feedback. They love to be guided in their
15:07
Speaker 1: diagnoses and prognoses. Yeah, I love it. That's a tough jam.
15:11
Speaker 1: I get it. Doctors are frustrated a lot of these
15:13
Speaker 1: days with self diagnosis and online doctoring. Sure, but you
15:17
Speaker 1: should also be your own advocate. We can't be in
15:19
Speaker 1: that before. Yeah, it's your leg. Yeah, if you want
15:22
Speaker 1: to keep your leg, you tell that doctor to go
15:24
Speaker 1: get some maggots. You're going to replace them with the
15:26
Speaker 1: doctor who will. How can I can find a guy? Yeah,
15:29
Speaker 1: I can get a guy by noon that'll put maggots
15:31
Speaker 1: on that wound. And actually there's a there's a group.
15:33
Speaker 1: I think Ronald Sherman, the guy we mentioned earlier, who's
15:36
Speaker 1: like the the US champion of maggot therapy. Um, it's
15:41
Speaker 1: there's this group called the b Turf Foundation b t
15:44
Speaker 1: e Er Foundation, UM, and they have all sorts of
15:48
Speaker 1: resources for people in that very situation, like how to
15:52
Speaker 1: talk to your doctor, UM that if your insurance won't
15:56
Speaker 1: cover it, let them know, because they say insurance actually
15:59
Speaker 1: most insurance covers maggot therapy, but most insurance claims people
16:04
Speaker 1: are not aware of that, so you may get denied
16:06
Speaker 1: at first. And here's how to talk to your insurance
16:09
Speaker 1: company that it really is. That beats going to your
16:12
Speaker 1: doctor and saying, well, you know what Josh and Chuck said.
16:15
Speaker 1: He you're not gonna like hearing this, right because you think, doctor,
16:19
Speaker 1: please take a sleep and be put maggots on my feet, right.
16:23
Speaker 1: And and that's the other thing too. I mean, like
16:25
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be suggesting this and the betur Foundation probably
16:29
Speaker 1: wouldn't be such advocates for it if it didn't work
16:32
Speaker 1: so amazingly well. It study after study, and we'll talk
16:38
Speaker 1: about the details of it, but there's so many studies
16:40
Speaker 1: out there. UM. Again. Sherman, who agreed, is an advocate,
16:45
Speaker 1: but in a pure reviewed journal published a survey of
16:47
Speaker 1: studies that he could find on maggot therapy and it's
16:51
Speaker 1: very clear that it works really, really well, and not
16:55
Speaker 1: only necessarily um as a means of last resort, but
16:59
Speaker 1: even just compare to the standard of care using like
17:03
Speaker 1: hydrogell or other things that you might use to treat
17:05
Speaker 1: a chronic wound. Maggots destroy it. They leave it in
17:08
Speaker 1: the dust. Yeah. And if it doesn't work, it's not
17:11
Speaker 1: gonna hurt anything, I can tell. Yeah, it just puts
17:14
Speaker 1: off how much longer before they amputate your foot? Pretty much?
17:18
Speaker 1: Uh So what will happen is they will Well, let's
17:21
Speaker 1: get into this a little bit. Um. There are four
17:24
Speaker 1: different and you where did you find this? Was this
17:26
Speaker 1: a a research paper? Yeah? This is by Ronald Sherman
17:31
Speaker 1: Mechanisms of Maggot Induced Wound Healing colin What do we
17:34
Speaker 1: know and where do we go from here? It was
17:36
Speaker 1: in the journal Evidence Based, Complimentary and Alternative Medicine in
17:40
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen, that's right. And he describes for different
17:44
Speaker 1: phases of basically healing a wound um homeostasis, inflammation, ploriferate. Man,
17:51
Speaker 1: I'm so bad at that one. Oh yeah, keep it coming,
17:55
Speaker 1: proliferation and uh, remodeling and maturing, and what happens is
18:01
Speaker 1: the cells get to work, they recruit other cells, they
18:04
Speaker 1: alter their activities and basically say, let's get to work
18:07
Speaker 1: cleaning and uh, well on all four of these stages
18:14
Speaker 1: to help heal the wound. Yeah, and at any any
18:16
Speaker 1: one of those stages, um, the the next process can
18:20
Speaker 1: stall out. Um. Normally it stalls out at inflammation because
18:25
Speaker 1: the infection gets out of hand in the body can't
18:28
Speaker 1: fight off the infection faster than it's laying the extra
18:32
Speaker 1: cellular matrix for the new cells to be rebuilt, the
18:36
Speaker 1: new tissue to recro um. And that's that's it's a
18:39
Speaker 1: common thing that leads to chronic wounds that just won't heal.
18:43
Speaker 1: And that's where maggots are really really useful to basically
18:46
Speaker 1: interrupt that stall and get the car moving again in
18:50
Speaker 1: the right direction. It's exactly right, they kick started. Uh
18:53
Speaker 1: So de Bradmant is removing dead tissue. And that is
18:57
Speaker 1: really where maggots excel um. They said, Uh, in here,
19:01
Speaker 1: each maggot can chew, well, they don't exactly chew, which
19:04
Speaker 1: we'll get to. Uh. They remove twenty five milligrams of
19:08
Speaker 1: necrotic material dead flesh, uh in just twenty four hours.
19:12
Speaker 1: That's pretty good. Yeah, and uh, there's there's actually three
19:16
Speaker 1: ways that maggots clean a wound. But the bridemant, which
19:19
Speaker 1: is getting in there and like just cleaning out, removing
19:22
Speaker 1: physically removing um that dead material. That's like the key
19:27
Speaker 1: that seems to be the key. And then there's also
19:30
Speaker 1: um anti microbial activity like actually killing the bacteria that's
19:34
Speaker 1: killing the flesh, leaving it cleaner than when they came in, yeah,
19:37
Speaker 1: which is amazing. And then even more astounding, stimulating new growth,
19:44
Speaker 1: like the act the presence of maggots in your wound
19:48
Speaker 1: stimulates new tissue growth around your skin. It's the most
19:52
Speaker 1: they're just like wonder creatures who knew. One of the
19:57
Speaker 1: ways that they remove this dead tissue is just by
20:01
Speaker 1: the nature of what their body is like. And they
20:05
Speaker 1: have these little prickly spines all over their body that
20:09
Speaker 1: act as a surgeon's rasp rasper or file what It
20:13
Speaker 1: basically just the fact that they're moving around on the
20:15
Speaker 1: wound is going to like file the stuff down and
20:19
Speaker 1: scrape the wound, which helps loosens it up. It's like
20:22
Speaker 1: a plow. It burrows through this dying and dead tissue
20:26
Speaker 1: and it just yeah, it loosens up. That's part one
20:28
Speaker 1: of deprived Part one. There's another part of it, which
20:32
Speaker 1: is the digestive enzymes that they excrete and secrete. It's
20:36
Speaker 1: called alimentary secretions and excretions a s. It's basically they're
20:40
Speaker 1: digestive juices, right, and they puke these up as they're
20:44
Speaker 1: moving around, and they just they just puke them everywhere
20:48
Speaker 1: and it dissolves this flesh. Yeah, I remember in the
20:51
Speaker 1: Body Farms episode we we talked about this one one
20:54
Speaker 1: of the old classics. And that's why I said earlier.
20:57
Speaker 1: They don't bite or choose something, they just lickquify it.
21:00
Speaker 1: And then and this this A s. C. Stuff is
21:03
Speaker 1: so greedy that it liquefies more dead flesh than the
21:07
Speaker 1: maggots can even consume, and they consume quite a bit,
21:11
Speaker 1: like you said, twenty five milligrams. That's a lot for
21:14
Speaker 1: a little tiny maggot in one day. But even more
21:17
Speaker 1: than that, they're liquefying even more of this dead tissue.
21:20
Speaker 1: So that part of the process of maggot debridemant therapy
21:24
Speaker 1: is draining out this liquefied necrotic tissue that's become liquefied
21:30
Speaker 1: from the alimentary or the the A S C stuff,
21:34
Speaker 1: the digest events ons, right, So you've got them burrowing around,
21:38
Speaker 1: you've got them puking into your wound, liquefying the dead tissue,
21:43
Speaker 1: leaving pretty much entirely the living tissue alone, and then
21:48
Speaker 1: you just kind of drain out the stuff that's that's
21:52
Speaker 1: in there. And the reason um that maggots are considered
21:55
Speaker 1: by the FDA a medical device rather than a drug
21:59
Speaker 1: is because the whole process of debridement isn't just a
22:03
Speaker 1: reaction to the chemicals. It is part of that mechanical
22:06
Speaker 1: movement of the maggots through the wound. So it's a drug,
22:10
Speaker 1: it's a device. I mean it's a device. Look at them, yea.
22:15
Speaker 1: And those that the secretions are so potent. They have
22:20
Speaker 1: basically DNA destroying qualities, Like they not only just break
22:25
Speaker 1: down tissue, they destroy the DNA. It's pretty amazing stuff
22:30
Speaker 1: it is. Should we take another break? Yeah, I'm a
22:33
Speaker 1: little excited. We probably should. I'm gonna go to the vomitorium.
22:37
Speaker 1: Are you grossed out slightly? I am not in the least.
22:41
Speaker 1: What does that say about me? I don't know. You
22:45
Speaker 1: have a stronger stomach, but I don't necessarily. I'm I'm
22:48
Speaker 1: just excited. All right, we'll go watch me vomited. At
22:50
Speaker 1: least that will gross me out, all right, Well that
23:13
Speaker 1: was disgusting, it was. It made me throw up in turn. Uh.
23:17
Speaker 1: So here's a couple of questions. Um, does it hurt
23:24
Speaker 1: Maybe a little bit at first. Yeah, I don't get
23:26
Speaker 1: the feeling that it's extremely painful. It probably depends on
23:29
Speaker 1: the wound. Um, But it can the first few treatments
23:33
Speaker 1: can apparently be a little bit painful. Right, And there's
23:35
Speaker 1: there's actually two mechanisms for the pain. One is that
23:39
Speaker 1: of an open wound, right, and you have maggots crawling
23:42
Speaker 1: over the exposed nerves in your open wound. That's not
23:44
Speaker 1: gonna feel good, No, it won't. Uh. And then number two,
23:48
Speaker 1: pressure in the wound can increase as the maggots get
23:50
Speaker 1: bigger from eating so much dead flesh. So, yes, the
23:55
Speaker 1: the the cura to that is pain killers, which, frankly,
23:58
Speaker 1: if you have an open wound with exposed is nerves,
24:00
Speaker 1: you should probably be on those anyway. Sure you will be,
24:03
Speaker 1: so it probably won't hurt because there'll be some sort
24:06
Speaker 1: of pain management going on, but you will still feel
24:10
Speaker 1: most likely unless the doctor completely numbs the area. Maggots
24:14
Speaker 1: crawling around inside you see, That's what That's the part
24:17
Speaker 1: that gets me is actually thinking about undergoing this therapy
24:21
Speaker 1: myself is what gets me, not like seeing it or
24:24
Speaker 1: reading about it, but thinking about having an open wound
24:27
Speaker 1: on the bottom of my foot and having maggots creeping
24:29
Speaker 1: around in there. See. The thing is is I think
24:32
Speaker 1: anybody would feel that way. There's very few, included myself.
24:35
Speaker 1: I'm not grossed up by this, but I wouldn't want
24:37
Speaker 1: maggots talking wound. But I think if your backs against
24:40
Speaker 1: the wall, uh that, or you lose your foot, I try.
24:44
Speaker 1: I would definitely try. I think people would apparently man
24:48
Speaker 1: and I would demand some high quality drugs. And they
24:52
Speaker 1: also have um, what is it called amnesiotics to make
24:57
Speaker 1: you forget about it so you can't form memor while
25:00
Speaker 1: it's happening. So maybe that would be a nice thing
25:02
Speaker 1: to do too. So the other question is can you
25:04
Speaker 1: just use any kind of maggot And the answer is no.
25:08
Speaker 1: What they found is the most useful is the larva
25:11
Speaker 1: of the green blowfly. And like we said earlier, these
25:14
Speaker 1: things are now grown just sort of like the medical
25:17
Speaker 1: leeches there shipped and sterile containers. Uh, as if it
25:21
Speaker 1: were medicine, even though it's a device and the B
25:24
Speaker 1: T E R. Foundation. They go into a lot about this,
25:28
Speaker 1: like could anybody do this? And they say, well, no,
25:31
Speaker 1: because you need a prescription. It's an FDA control yourself.
25:35
Speaker 1: But they say, anybody who can read can basically follow
25:40
Speaker 1: the instructions on the package. Yeah, I wouldn't. I mean,
25:44
Speaker 1: I wouldn't advise that as your nondoctor. Sure, I'm not
25:47
Speaker 1: saying that either, but I mean this may be your
25:49
Speaker 1: doctor's first time too. There. Their point was, it's not
25:53
Speaker 1: it's not difficult, just follow the instructions on the packet.
25:56
Speaker 1: What if you went into your doctor though he got
25:58
Speaker 1: the maggots out and he put on his bifocals, was like,
26:01
Speaker 1: all right, let's see how to do this right, or
26:03
Speaker 1: like he tears the package open. They go everywhere you
26:06
Speaker 1: have like Jerry Lewis as a doctor. Uh oh. But
26:10
Speaker 1: although they do say, um, you can't just load it
26:13
Speaker 1: up with maggots. There should be no more than eight
26:15
Speaker 1: maggots per square centimeter. Yeah, I saw five to eight.
26:18
Speaker 1: And so when you have the maggots applied to your
26:22
Speaker 1: UM wound. They're going to make sure that the healthy
26:26
Speaker 1: area around the wound is covered up so the maggots
26:29
Speaker 1: can't get to it, which goes back to World War Two.
26:32
Speaker 1: They're going to cover it, cover up the wound after
26:34
Speaker 1: they apply the maggots five to eight per square centimeter,
26:37
Speaker 1: like you say, they're gonna cover it up so they
26:39
Speaker 1: can't wander off because maggots like to leave before their
26:42
Speaker 1: work is done. Um TV. They're full pretty much, UM,
26:47
Speaker 1: but they can still eat more if you'll keep them
26:50
Speaker 1: in there, so they will cover up. They will put
26:53
Speaker 1: the maggots in five to eight, cover it up with
26:55
Speaker 1: this bandage and basically they will just sit there and
26:58
Speaker 1: eat for between forty eight and seventy two hours, and
27:03
Speaker 1: then the bandage will be removed. The maggots will then
27:06
Speaker 1: sadly be incinerated or put into an autoclave or put
27:12
Speaker 1: into a plasma gas of fire, or bronzed and hung
27:16
Speaker 1: on your wall for real, like an ant farm. Yeah,
27:19
Speaker 1: because it's like, thank you for this great contribution to
27:22
Speaker 1: saving my foot, Now go be autoclave today. I would
27:26
Speaker 1: name them and save them and preserve them. Um, you'd
27:31
Speaker 1: be violating, I'm sure all sorts of medical waste laws,
27:34
Speaker 1: but who cares and so and then that's that's what's
27:37
Speaker 1: called the treatment cycle, and most patients UH supposedly go
27:41
Speaker 1: between two and four treatment cycles. And again, while this
27:46
Speaker 1: is happening, what's going on is the maggots are debriding
27:49
Speaker 1: the dead flesh, they're liquefying it, they're eating it, and
27:53
Speaker 1: they're also disinfecting it and stimulating growth. Right, pretty amazing.
27:57
Speaker 1: So with the with this, with the disinfecting, figured that
28:01
Speaker 1: there was some sort of gut flora that the maggots
28:05
Speaker 1: have that prevents them from being infected by microbial That
28:09
Speaker 1: would make sense because they're in that rotting flesh as well,
28:11
Speaker 1: and they're right, So what gives Well, it turns out
28:15
Speaker 1: that there are a couple of um types of I'm
28:19
Speaker 1: not quite sure what what kind of um bacteria they are,
28:23
Speaker 1: but they are. That's not true. The proteus mirabilious is
28:28
Speaker 1: a type of symbiotic microbe that you find in the
28:31
Speaker 1: gut of a maggot, right, And this thing just destroys
28:35
Speaker 1: microbial life. So it's killing the bacteria that's causing this
28:39
Speaker 1: infection in your wound. But there's something that that maggots.
28:43
Speaker 1: This is yet another thing. So think about it, Chuck,
28:45
Speaker 1: Like you said, maggots, the very structure of a maggot
28:48
Speaker 1: body dibrides the wound. That's pretty amazing. This maggot anti
28:53
Speaker 1: microbial stuff not only does it kill microbes, it destroys
28:57
Speaker 1: the thing that naturally protects microbes, which called biofilm. Yeah,
29:01
Speaker 1: we've talked about biofilm a lot on this show, and um,
29:04
Speaker 1: it's basically it's basically a film, like a literal film,
29:09
Speaker 1: like a They call it a polymeric matrix. But the
29:12
Speaker 1: easiest way to say in Leyman's Terman is it's a film, right,
29:15
Speaker 1: It's like a protective coding. Yeah, and the little spiny bodies,
29:18
Speaker 1: like one way they get rid of the thing is
29:20
Speaker 1: by roughing it up, And that's exactly what the little
29:22
Speaker 1: bodies do, right, And that's part of surgical derived mint
29:25
Speaker 1: with like um, like going in there and scrubbing a wound,
29:29
Speaker 1: um with I don't know, steel wool or something like
29:32
Speaker 1: that that will break up the biofilm. It's also must
29:35
Speaker 1: be awfully painful, right. Maggots naturally can destroy not just
29:40
Speaker 1: the bacteria, but also the biofilm that protects it too.
29:43
Speaker 1: Which makes them extremely handy with things like MERSA and
29:47
Speaker 1: other antibiotic resistant um bacteria and all kinds of ulcers, right,
29:54
Speaker 1: not like internal ulcers, but the open wound kind right
29:56
Speaker 1: exactly from diabetes, from bed sore um. And there's been
30:01
Speaker 1: a lot of studies of people with bedstors that have
30:03
Speaker 1: found that maggots helped those kind of ulcers tremendously. So, uh,
30:07
Speaker 1: let's talk about this one study or a couple of studies. Actually, UM,
30:11
Speaker 1: there was one study of spinal cord injury patients that
30:14
Speaker 1: had non healing ulcers, which is the problem. They monitored
30:19
Speaker 1: them over three to four weeks UM, and they were
30:22
Speaker 1: getting regular wound care at the same time, like sometimes
30:24
Speaker 1: it's used in conjunction, I think usually is used in
30:27
Speaker 1: conjunction with like standard care. Uh. And they found that, uh,
30:33
Speaker 1: after three or four weeks of maggot therapy, tissue quality
30:35
Speaker 1: and wound size were ressessed weekly, and they found that
30:39
Speaker 1: debridement was achieved in less than fourteen days an average
30:42
Speaker 1: of ten days, and none of the control group wounds
30:45
Speaker 1: were more than fifty dibrided after a month. A month
30:49
Speaker 1: not even half dibrided. None of the wounds not half
30:52
Speaker 1: the wounds were divided. None of the wounds were even
30:55
Speaker 1: half dibrided after a month, chuck of the control group, Yes,
30:58
Speaker 1: amazing where they didn't use the mag gets that. Yes,
31:01
Speaker 1: that's that's objectively amazing it is. And then they did
31:05
Speaker 1: a larger clinical trial and found UH. This time they
31:09
Speaker 1: got two hundred and sixty three subjects, which is pretty
31:11
Speaker 1: good for this kind of rare treatment for UH. And
31:14
Speaker 1: they found that um using the hydrogel which you mentioned earlier,
31:18
Speaker 1: compression dressings, just the standard care. That was the control. Yeah,
31:24
Speaker 1: that's obviously the control they um. It differed significantly between
31:27
Speaker 1: the three groups. Um, what was the third group? The
31:30
Speaker 1: third group used bio bags, which are like it's like
31:33
Speaker 1: a little pouch. You said, it was like a rav
31:35
Speaker 1: healthy Yeah, and it's filled with live maggots, but it
31:38
Speaker 1: prevents them from burrowing. All it is is using their
31:41
Speaker 1: chemical secretions. Yeah, I don't That to me is just
31:44
Speaker 1: like why go halfway? Right? Exactly? Well, people, I don't
31:48
Speaker 1: want a maggot crawling in my wound, but a bag
31:51
Speaker 1: of them is fine doing the shake shake near my wound. Right. So, um,
31:55
Speaker 1: it actually has been shown to be not nearly as
31:58
Speaker 1: effective as just letting what's called free range maggots burrow
32:02
Speaker 1: through the wound. So they found the media time for
32:04
Speaker 1: debryment was fourteen days with free range, twenty eight days
32:08
Speaker 1: with the bag ravioli, and seventy two days for the control. Yeah,
32:13
Speaker 1: that's pretty amazing. Yeah, Like I I don't know, I
32:16
Speaker 1: don't think it should be a last resort. You know,
32:20
Speaker 1: I agree, and I think that increasingly it's becoming less
32:23
Speaker 1: and less of the last resort, because I mean, you
32:25
Speaker 1: can compare it to the control, Like the standard of
32:28
Speaker 1: care took seventy two days for the wound to be divided,
32:32
Speaker 1: free range maggots fourteen days. That to me says that
32:35
Speaker 1: free range maggots top the standard of care as it
32:38
Speaker 1: stands right now. But like you say, there's a lot
32:41
Speaker 1: of people who are saying, this is just a last resort.
32:44
Speaker 1: The next thing we're gonna do is amputate your foot.
32:46
Speaker 1: But let's try this one last time. Or in the
32:48
Speaker 1: case of persistent infections from like MERSA, where just antibiotics
32:53
Speaker 1: just don't work, let's let's try maggots and see if
32:57
Speaker 1: we can fix it. And maggots do work. There was
32:59
Speaker 1: a study that found that of thirteen people treated who
33:03
Speaker 1: had Merca treated with maggots alone. Twelve of the thirteen
33:08
Speaker 1: had complete recovery and wound healing um from a mercer infection.
33:14
Speaker 1: Mercy's nasty stuff too. Yeah, I think did we do
33:16
Speaker 1: what I'm merca? I feel like we did. I know
33:20
Speaker 1: we've talked about it. I don't know if it got
33:21
Speaker 1: its own show, though it may have been in the
33:23
Speaker 1: should we outlaw anti bacterial Soap episode? Well there's been
33:28
Speaker 1: a lot of them, almost eight hundred. Uh you got
33:32
Speaker 1: anything else? Surely I do, but I guess not. Um.
33:42
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well, there's one other thing we kept kind
33:44
Speaker 1: of teasing it. It actually stimulates growth. A couple of
33:49
Speaker 1: studies have found that the presence of maggots um produce
33:54
Speaker 1: more blood vessel redevelopment and tissue redevelopment than it's not
34:00
Speaker 1: being present. So something about them actually stimulates tissue growth
34:05
Speaker 1: and blood vessel growth, which promotes wound healing even more.
34:09
Speaker 1: Up with maggots. Up with maggots indeed, Man, I love them.
34:12
Speaker 1: I'm so psyched about maggots right now. Well, it definitely
34:15
Speaker 1: changes the way you think about them, Like next time
34:17
Speaker 1: you see a the dead squirrel that you've killed. They're
34:22
Speaker 1: clearly trying to bring it back to life. Yeah, and
34:24
Speaker 1: you see the maggots you can. You don't think that's disgusting.
34:26
Speaker 1: You just think those are little things doing their thing,
34:30
Speaker 1: doing their thing. Little things doing their thing. Now I'm
34:32
Speaker 1: going to auto clay them. That's right. If you want
34:35
Speaker 1: to know more about maggot therapy, you can type those
34:38
Speaker 1: words in the search bar at how stuff forks dot com.
34:41
Speaker 1: And since i said search parts, time forward listener, I'm
34:47
Speaker 1: gonna call this taking the task somewhat over a term. Guys,
34:52
Speaker 1: I want to say you are my favorite podcast by far.
34:55
Speaker 1: I've been listening since you were just a little five
34:58
Speaker 1: minute blurbs. Oh man, you sure have grown up. I've
35:01
Speaker 1: never written in before, but felt I had to comment
35:03
Speaker 1: on Josh's statement that climate change was for global warming
35:06
Speaker 1: was settled science. No, I'm not disputing the data that
35:10
Speaker 1: shows an increase in global temperatures. While you can certainly
35:13
Speaker 1: argue it's accuracy, especially for older data, it's still just data.
35:16
Speaker 1: It's not science. The part that gets me upset about
35:19
Speaker 1: the term settled science that by definition, science is never settled,
35:24
Speaker 1: and that's in all caps. I think we talked a
35:27
Speaker 1: lot about this as a scientific method up this stuff.
35:29
Speaker 1: You guys actually did a podcast on the scientific method,
35:32
Speaker 1: So you should know that at best you can show
35:35
Speaker 1: a particular theory is supported by existing data and not
35:38
Speaker 1: contradicted by anything we know of at the time. But
35:41
Speaker 1: there's a reason that ultra successful theories like Muton's theory
35:43
Speaker 1: of gravity hind science theory of relativity are still theories.
35:47
Speaker 1: They could be completely discredited by a single piece of
35:50
Speaker 1: data contradicting them. So the whole idea of taking a
35:53
Speaker 1: body of fact saying it's settled is far more political
35:55
Speaker 1: concept than scientific. When while people with various viewpoints in
35:59
Speaker 1: the subject would like to have uh someplace to plant
36:01
Speaker 1: their ideological flag, saying something is indisputedly true as opposed
36:06
Speaker 1: to probably false is simply not something science and the
36:09
Speaker 1: scientific method is equipped to do. In short, science is
36:13
Speaker 1: never settled. You cannot simply say this is true. Move on,
36:16
Speaker 1: it's not how it works. And that is from Spencer
36:19
Speaker 1: Carpenter right here in our own Smyrna, Georgia. We're not
36:22
Speaker 1: in well, I mean it's it's nearby. What I just
36:28
Speaker 1: did is what Spencer just did. Spencer, I was using
36:32
Speaker 1: a literary device. I was actually using the same type
36:35
Speaker 1: of argument that science that non science climate deniers use
36:39
Speaker 1: against scientists. I was basically saying, like, it's done, drop it.
36:44
Speaker 1: There's enough science there to say you're you're you're wrong.
36:50
Speaker 1: Let's move on and just all except that climate science
36:52
Speaker 1: is going. It's a layoff. So that was a clever ruse.
36:56
Speaker 1: It wasn't a ruse at all. It was it was
36:58
Speaker 1: just I was not be literal like apparently, which is
37:02
Speaker 1: what Spencer deals in literal terms. Uh, if you want
37:06
Speaker 1: to take us to test because you are overly literal,
37:09
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37:12
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37:18
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37:23
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37:25
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