Latest / The You Project / #2004 Folate, Paracetamol & Pregnancy - David Gillespie
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Great team. It's you project, David James, Kevin, Patrick Gillspian's
- 0:04Speaker 1: here as he is on a semi regular basis. Tiffany
- 0:07Speaker 1: and Mildred Malaria Cook is here in the.
- 0:12Speaker 2: Malaria Mildred or is that really your name?
- 0:17Speaker 1: That's her real No, that's so hurtful. David, Hi, Hi,
- 0:22Speaker 1: how are you? I'm fabulous? Thanks? How's your Monday gone?
- 0:26Speaker 1: Give us a quick snapshot? Oh, we know you bought
- 0:28Speaker 1: because you and I did a potty before. You bought
- 0:30Speaker 1: four new tires and you didn't get ripped.
- 0:33Speaker 2: Loved him some shining, got out for a stroll.
- 0:36Speaker 1: I've had a good monday. You've had a really good monday.
- 0:39Speaker 1: We're beautiful. I went down the beach and I put
- 0:41Speaker 1: my little toes in the sand, and then I put
- 0:44Speaker 1: my little calves, which are not that little, my significant
- 0:47Speaker 1: calves in the water in the water. How Good's just
- 0:51Speaker 1: getting in salt water a little bit?
- 0:53Speaker 2: Yeah?
- 0:54Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, my body was happy. I went and sat
- 0:56Speaker 1: in the grass. There's something about connecting with nature. Yeah,
- 1:02Speaker 1: I reckon. David Gillespie'd be a big fan of grounding
- 1:05Speaker 1: tif you know where you take your shoes and socks
- 1:07Speaker 1: off and just get in the dirt and there's that
- 1:09Speaker 1: I reckon he'd be all over that. What he's got
- 1:13Speaker 1: to say. I don't know, that's bullshit.
- 1:16Speaker 2: I looked at it now, I know. I mean, you
- 1:18Speaker 2: know there's die Hard, the die Hard thing, you know
- 1:20Speaker 2: where you at the start of die Hard where the
- 1:22Speaker 2: guy sitting next to him on the plane says to
- 1:25Speaker 2: you know, when you get off the plane, scrunch your toes.
- 1:28Speaker 2: You're going to take your shoes off and scrunch your
- 1:29Speaker 2: toes in the carpet. Make you feel you know, make
- 1:32Speaker 2: you feel good.
- 1:34Speaker 1: What about those in that same kind of vein? I
- 1:36Speaker 1: shouldn't say what I'm about to say everyone, So if
- 1:39Speaker 1: you don't want to be offended, just come back in
- 1:40Speaker 1: thirty seconds. You've been warned. What about those people who
- 1:45Speaker 1: stick there and facing the sun? You know they I forget,
- 1:49Speaker 1: there's some kind of they get that kind of if
- 1:53Speaker 1: you've heard of this, haven't you Where people in the
- 1:55Speaker 1: morning they stick their bum up facing the sun to
- 1:58Speaker 1: get some kind of and the thirty second people are back,
- 2:01Speaker 1: you're welcome. I can't say I'm going to be doing
- 2:05Speaker 1: that anytime soon, especially in Magpie season.
- 2:12Speaker 2: What's it supposed to do for you.
- 2:14Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know, it's some you know, it's I
- 2:16Speaker 1: shouldn't say it's in that group. But there's a bunch
- 2:18Speaker 1: of people who, not a few, like quite a lot
- 2:22Speaker 1: of people who if maybe you can look up what's
- 2:24Speaker 1: see that, I reckon that David Ashbury would do that? Yeah,
- 2:28Speaker 1: probably maybe. Well he also David Asbury, who's a world
- 2:33Speaker 1: famous biohacker that you probably don't know of or need
- 2:36Speaker 1: to know of David. But one of the things he's
- 2:38Speaker 1: famous for is recommending people inject their own urine intramuscularly.
- 2:44Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, and many other interesting and curious things.
- 2:49Speaker 1: I think he was one of the whether or not
- 2:51Speaker 1: that's a good or bad thing, but one of the
- 2:54Speaker 1: kind of ten, twelve, fifteen year ago early pioneers, if
- 2:59Speaker 1: that's a good thing of what they colloquially call biohacking.
- 3:04Speaker 1: But it's gaining I think it's gaining in some places
- 3:08Speaker 1: a little bit of credibility because what's his name, doctor
- 3:11Speaker 1: Jeff gross Tiff, you know, the one from Las Vegas
- 3:14Speaker 1: that we have on ye. I mean he's literally a
- 3:16Speaker 1: surgeon and a medical doctor and considers himself a biohacker.
- 3:20Speaker 1: So must be getting a little bit of something.
- 3:22Speaker 2: Really, I mean, a surgeon is the ultimate biohacker, aren't they.
- 3:26Speaker 2: I mean they're getting in there and chopping stuff up.
- 3:30Speaker 1: Well, I know another surgeon who he said to me,
- 3:35Speaker 1: don't get don't get back surgery unless there is no
- 3:39Speaker 1: other option.
- 3:41Speaker 2: Look, there's a lot of a lot of stuff, and
- 3:44Speaker 2: about the efficacy of a lot of orthopedic surgery, you know,
- 3:49Speaker 2: a lot of it seems to fall in the category
- 3:51Speaker 2: of doing it to make the surgeon rich and not
- 3:54Speaker 2: much else. You know, because the studies on whether or
- 3:58Speaker 2: not you know, knee operations and back operations and so on,
- 4:03Speaker 2: actually do anything pretty light on the ground.
- 4:07Speaker 1: Well. Dr cal Freed, who is a is a sports
- 4:12Speaker 1: physician in Melbourne, worked in the AFL system for a
- 4:15Speaker 1: very long time. Friend of mine, has been on the
- 4:16Speaker 1: show quite a few times. He is absolutely against any
- 4:22Speaker 1: surgery unless there's no other option. And of course there
- 4:25Speaker 1: are times when surgery is required, of course, but you know,
- 4:29Speaker 1: some people have a bit of a dodgyback surgery. It's like, no, no,
- 4:33Speaker 1: let's try these other seven things before we get to
- 4:35Speaker 1: the surgical option, which is not say, I mean, of course,
- 4:38Speaker 1: some surgery is life saving. Of course, we're not saying
- 4:40Speaker 1: all surgery is bad or surgeons are bad. We're just
- 4:43Speaker 1: saying maybe it should be. Maybe it should move down
- 4:46Speaker 1: the list a little bit and we'll particularly for orthopedics.
- 4:49Speaker 2: You know it should definitely do research on any orthopedic
- 4:53Speaker 2: operation for a chronic disease before you go that way,
- 4:57Speaker 2: I would suggest.
- 4:58Speaker 1: Now, speaking of all things medical, let me get my
- 5:01Speaker 1: little let me get a little my little specs out.
- 5:03Speaker 1: So in your substack tip, what are you laughing at?
- 5:07Speaker 1: And I look like fucking elma fud when I swapped
- 5:10Speaker 1: one pair of glasses for another pair of glasses. I'm
- 5:13Speaker 1: old as fuck now, so I don't care the rest
- 5:15Speaker 1: of you can make fun of me. You've got to
- 5:16Speaker 1: live as long as me first, so you can all
- 5:18Speaker 1: get rid of You've got to get to this age.
- 5:23Speaker 2: Lucky. You're not sensitive about it though, right.
- 5:25Speaker 1: No, not at all. I'm not sensitive at all. Back
- 5:27Speaker 1: in therapy for Jumbo and Invisible and Dangerous Overdose is
- 5:31Speaker 1: the name of an article that David wrote for that's
- 5:36Speaker 1: in substack in his little what's it called to game data?
- 5:41Speaker 1: Thank you? Thank you. Every day, millions of Australian women
- 5:45Speaker 1: consumer government mandated medication. They don't know, they don't know
- 5:49Speaker 1: they're taking. It's in their morning toast, their lunchtime sandwich.
- 5:51Speaker 1: They're fortified cereal and they're multi vitamin tablet. This medication,
- 5:55Speaker 1: folic acid vitamin B nine was introduced as a public
- 5:59Speaker 1: health miracle, simple way to protect unborn babies from devastating
- 6:03Speaker 1: birth defects. But a decade later, a startling picture is emerging.
- 6:08Speaker 2: Do tell Okay, So let's I want to preface this
- 6:12Speaker 2: by if there are any pregnant we're about to be
- 6:15Speaker 2: pregnant women listening. There is nothing wrong with taking FOLL
- 6:21Speaker 2: eight supplements. It is a undoubtedly a good thing to do.
- 6:27Speaker 2: The benefits in preventing spina bifitter and other brain formation
- 6:34Speaker 2: or birth defects associated with brain malformation are unequivocal. So
- 6:39Speaker 2: I don't want this segment to talk anyone out of that,
- 6:44Speaker 2: and I make that really really clear in the piece
- 6:46Speaker 2: as well. But there's an unintended consequence of MANDA, and
- 6:52Speaker 2: I guess what I'm talking about mostly in this piece
- 6:55Speaker 2: is mass medication, which I have a real problem with.
- 6:57Speaker 2: And we've talked before about fluoridation and very other things.
- 7:01Speaker 2: I'm not against the things that they're supposed to be fixing.
- 7:06Speaker 2: I am against mass medicating people without them knowing they're
- 7:11Speaker 2: being mass medicated. And we've talked before about some of
- 7:14Speaker 2: the other B vitamin's vitamin B six, for example, which
- 7:17Speaker 2: is added into magnesium tablets to make them absorbed more easily,
- 7:22Speaker 2: but can massively overdose you on vitamin B six in
- 7:25Speaker 2: a really dangerous fashion, just because you don't even know
- 7:29Speaker 2: you're taking it. You know, people would say I'm not
- 7:31Speaker 2: taking out at all, without realizing they're taking ten times
- 7:35Speaker 2: the daily dose just by taking magnesium tablets. This falls
- 7:40Speaker 2: into that category. So in two thousand and nine, the
- 7:44Speaker 2: Australian government mandated the vitamin B nine, or folic acid,
- 7:49Speaker 2: be added to all bread sold in Australia, all bread
- 7:54Speaker 2: and flour for making bread. So it is added in,
- 7:59Speaker 2: and it's added in a very specific level, which is
- 8:02Speaker 2: at one hundred and twenty micrograms per hundred grams. The
- 8:07Speaker 2: aim there was to prevent foliated deficiency in the population. Now,
- 8:12Speaker 2: we've never had a big problem foloid deficiency, but there
- 8:15Speaker 2: were some very convincing studies that said that if pregnant
- 8:19Speaker 2: women increase their folid intake to up to one thousand
- 8:24Speaker 2: micrograms per day. Then there was a significant reduction in
- 8:31Speaker 2: the chances of spina biffeter and a bunch of other
- 8:36Speaker 2: birth defects associated with the brain and spinal cord occurring. Now,
- 8:41Speaker 2: these things are pretty rare anyway, so a significant increase
- 8:44Speaker 2: in the probability or decrease in the probability. You don't
- 8:47Speaker 2: have to have change much to do that. But it
- 8:49Speaker 2: was clear on the evidence that if you increase foliated
- 8:53Speaker 2: supplementation during pregnancy you could reduce the rate of spina
- 8:57Speaker 2: biffeter and some other conditions equivocal. So the government said, right, well,
- 9:02Speaker 2: we're not taking any chances with this. We're going to
- 9:05Speaker 2: mandate this in the bread and so we're not going
- 9:08Speaker 2: to tell others to be to go and take foloated supplements,
- 9:11Speaker 2: although they do that as well. We're just going to
- 9:14Speaker 2: make sure if you ignore all health advice and you
- 9:17Speaker 2: ignore people telling you to take foloiated supplements and all
- 9:19Speaker 2: that sort of stuff, and you are pregnant, then you'll
- 9:23Speaker 2: be fine. And that's the thing of it. So it
- 9:26Speaker 2: happened in two thousand and nine. Great so far the
- 9:31Speaker 2: problem is that a very big study has just been released.
- 9:36Speaker 2: There's looked at a really interesting scientific experiment, which is
- 9:44Speaker 2: normally you can't do experiments on pregnant women. You know, ethics.
- 9:47Speaker 2: People have all sorts of problems. You know, I can
- 9:51Speaker 2: control group you're going to do something to in another
- 9:53Speaker 2: control and another group you're going to not do something to.
- 9:55Speaker 2: It's just there's all kinds of ethical problems with that.
- 9:58Speaker 2: So it's really tricky. But there was a natural experiment
- 10:02Speaker 2: that occurred in Australia in that there was a popular
- 10:04Speaker 2: there was a big study of pregnant women that was
- 10:07Speaker 2: where they recruited the population before the mandate, and another
- 10:12Speaker 2: big study the recruited from the same population after the
- 10:17Speaker 2: mandate ten years later. So there was a before two
- 10:20Speaker 2: thousand and nine and then ten years later, same group.
- 10:23Speaker 2: And so you've got a fantastic experiment there where you
- 10:27Speaker 2: can say, Okay, first of all, did it deliver the
- 10:30Speaker 2: promised benefits in spine and bifida. Answer unequivocally yes, they did. Okay, terrific.
- 10:35Speaker 2: But the other thing they noticed was a huge increase
- 10:40Speaker 2: and I'm talking a tripling of the rate of gestational
- 10:45Speaker 2: diabetes in the mothers.
- 10:48Speaker 1: Oh wow, oh wow.
- 10:51Speaker 2: So gestational diabetes is just is like type two diabetes,
- 10:55Speaker 2: but it's called gestational because it happens, you know, usually
- 11:00Speaker 2: first during pregnancy, and now all pregnant women get a
- 11:04Speaker 2: little bit insulent resistant. It's the nature of pregnancy. And
- 11:09Speaker 2: the reason for that is that evolution favors the baby,
- 11:15Speaker 2: and so the baby must be fed first. So if
- 11:18Speaker 2: you make the mother a little insulin resistant, then the
- 11:21Speaker 2: blood glucose is going to the baby first. So that's
- 11:25Speaker 2: all perfectly normal and perfectly by design. What they found though,
- 11:31Speaker 2: was that if you significantly overdose people on FOL eight,
- 11:36Speaker 2: if you go above that's what seems to be that
- 11:38Speaker 2: magical thousand micrograms today, by the way, the recommended doses
- 11:42Speaker 2: four to six hundred micrograms per day for a pregnant woman.
- 11:46Speaker 2: But there's this sort of goldilock zone that's between that
- 11:48Speaker 2: and a thousand, where as long as you're under the thousand,
- 11:51Speaker 2: you're okay. B But if you go above that and
- 11:55Speaker 2: significantly above that, then you significantly increase the likelihood that
- 12:00Speaker 2: the mother will experience gestational diabetes. So, in other words,
- 12:05Speaker 2: the mother will become a type two diabetic at least
- 12:08Speaker 2: during the pregnancy. And the studies also say that if
- 12:12Speaker 2: you're if you have a gestational diabetes, then you're much
- 12:15Speaker 2: much more likely to ultimately end up with type two
- 12:17Speaker 2: diabetes within a decade after the pregnancy.
- 12:21Speaker 1: Can I ask a quick ask a quick question just
- 12:24Speaker 1: to try to give this some context or meaning for
- 12:26Speaker 1: people going, you know, four to six hundred micrograms of
- 12:30Speaker 1: fole eight or up to a thousand, and it's in
- 12:32Speaker 1: the bread, and so people that are maybe I don't
- 12:35Speaker 1: know if you know the answer to this, but so
- 12:38Speaker 1: if somebody had, let's say, two pieces of bread that's
- 12:41Speaker 1: got FOL eight, you know it's been supplemented or what
- 12:45Speaker 1: do they call it fortified with fol eight? How much
- 12:49Speaker 1: like four to six hundred micrograms? What would two bits
- 12:52Speaker 1: of kind of regular bread have do you know.
- 12:56Speaker 2: Oh, well, that's two bits of bread is going to
- 12:59Speaker 2: be around two hundred grams. Mark in terms of bread,
- 13:02Speaker 2: it's one hundred and twenty. It's mandated to be one
- 13:05Speaker 2: hundred and twenty micrograms per hundred grams. Okay, so every
- 13:10Speaker 2: sandwich you have is going to be one hundred and
- 13:12Speaker 2: twenty micrograms. The problem is, and if that was the
- 13:16Speaker 2: only place it was. Then nobody be at any particular risk.
- 13:20Speaker 2: I suspected nobody's eating that much bread. I mean, unless
- 13:22Speaker 2: you're chowing die down on an entire loaf of bread.
- 13:26Speaker 2: You know, in a typical day, you're not going to
- 13:30Speaker 2: eat well, maybe you eat two, maybe four, maybe you
- 13:32Speaker 2: eat six pieces of bread, but you're still well involved
- 13:35Speaker 2: locks aren't. The problem is that, in addition to that,
- 13:40Speaker 2: women are also intentionally supplementing with filowed. So one of
- 13:44Speaker 2: the big pieces of medical advice that they're given is
- 13:47Speaker 2: to take foloid supplements before conception and during pregnancy, and
- 13:52Speaker 2: those tablets generally are around that recommended level, somewhere between
- 13:57Speaker 2: four hundred and six hundred micrograms. So that's that plus
- 14:00Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty and the two pieces of bread
- 14:02Speaker 2: plus a similar amount in a bowl of fortified cereals.
- 14:06Speaker 2: So most breakfast cereals are fortified with folate. Plus if
- 14:11Speaker 2: you take a multivitamin, then you can add another two
- 14:14Speaker 2: to four hundred micrograms on there as well. So, because
- 14:18Speaker 2: it's regarded as an unequivocally good thing, it's appearing in
- 14:22Speaker 2: lots of places. So there's the mandated thing in the bread.
- 14:26Speaker 2: But it's in lots of other places too. And what
- 14:29Speaker 2: the study found is that most Australian women had we're
- 14:34Speaker 2: now massively overdosing on folate. So between what they were
- 14:40Speaker 2: intentionally taking and what they're accidentally taking, they were taking
- 14:43Speaker 2: in a lot of folate and instead of the expected result,
- 14:49Speaker 2: which would be well, that doesn't really matter, it's no
- 14:51Speaker 2: such thing as too much of a good thing. Well,
- 14:53Speaker 2: in this case, it looks like there could be such
- 14:55Speaker 2: a thing as too much of a good thing. And
- 15:00Speaker 2: that's the concern. Now, you know, there's ways you can
- 15:04Speaker 2: criticize this study. You can you can say, okay, well
- 15:09Speaker 2: the population became more obese in that period of time,
- 15:14Speaker 2: that's definitely true, but it didn't become not sufficient to
- 15:19Speaker 2: explain a tripling of the rate of gestational diabetes where
- 15:23Speaker 2: we've gone from five percent of pregnant women having it
- 15:27Speaker 2: to fifteen percent of pregnant women having it, big jump
- 15:32Speaker 2: in a decade.
- 15:34Speaker 1: Less can I ask? So when in two thousand and
- 15:38Speaker 1: nine this became you know, mandated, or this just became
- 15:43Speaker 1: was well people made aware of this, like is this
- 15:47Speaker 1: government at the time.
- 15:49Speaker 2: I think at the time there was a fairly big
- 15:51Speaker 2: awareness campaign around it and you know why it was
- 15:53Speaker 2: being done, and everyone unequivocally agreed it was a good thing. Studies,
- 16:00Speaker 2: The studies on this are, you know, really clear pregnant
- 16:04Speaker 2: women should have folate, you know, prevention of spine of
- 16:08Speaker 2: if it is a massive, unequivocal benefit. The concern here
- 16:13Speaker 2: is that mass medicating always tends to have unintended consequences.
- 16:20Speaker 2: And what this study has done in a really precise
- 16:23Speaker 2: manner is and just because I'm lucky they had samples
- 16:28Speaker 2: from the same group before and after, has got into
- 16:32Speaker 2: the to answer the question, which is is it possible
- 16:35Speaker 2: to have too much of a good thing? And the
- 16:37Speaker 2: answer appears to be yes. So it's not I'm not
- 16:41Speaker 2: for a minute suggesting people shouldn't take folate or shouldn't
- 16:44Speaker 2: have followed supplementation. What I am suggesting is that they
- 16:46Speaker 2: should become an accountant of it. They should very carefully
- 16:51Speaker 2: pay attention to how much of it they are actually consuming.
- 16:55Speaker 1: And it's something we talk about, or we've talked about
- 16:57Speaker 1: a bit, you and I, but also more broadly on
- 16:59Speaker 1: the show, a lot is about the dose. It's like
- 17:02Speaker 1: anything exercise is great, but not seven hours a day.
- 17:06Speaker 1: You know what I mean, like drinking water is good,
- 17:09Speaker 1: but not seven liters a day. You know, it's like me.
- 17:12Speaker 2: But with both of those things, you're never going to
- 17:14Speaker 2: do it accidentally. You're never going to accidentally fall over
- 17:18Speaker 2: and find you've exercised seven hours a day. Where this
- 17:22Speaker 2: this you'll do without knowing about it. And that's the
- 17:26Speaker 2: concern is that this is in all the bread by
- 17:33Speaker 2: not by law, but it's there anyway. It's also in
- 17:36Speaker 2: most of the cereals, and it's creeping into many things
- 17:39Speaker 2: because people see it as a marketing thing. This is
- 17:43Speaker 2: you know, this contains folight and that helps sell things
- 17:46Speaker 2: to pregnant women.
- 17:48Speaker 1: M wow, well, I guess like people are. How do
- 17:56Speaker 1: you manage this? You just become more aware, I guess,
- 17:58Speaker 1: and you just.
- 17:59Speaker 2: Well, it's like that with B six and we had
- 18:01Speaker 2: this discussion before. I mean, it's know about it, be
- 18:06Speaker 2: aware of it, know about it, know how much you're consuming,
- 18:10Speaker 2: and be conscious of it. The the the science is
- 18:15Speaker 2: really clear that anything one hundred one thousand micrograms a
- 18:17Speaker 2: day is perfectly fine. It's it's easy to stay under
- 18:23Speaker 2: that as long as you're aware of it and still
- 18:26Speaker 2: take foiloight supplements. Just be aware. Okay, If I'm having
- 18:29Speaker 2: one hundred grams of bred thats one hundred and twenty grams.
- 18:31Speaker 2: If I'm having a breakfast cereal, there's there's some there.
- 18:34Speaker 2: If I'm having any other kind of supplement, I read
- 18:36Speaker 2: the label and I check how much folate is in
- 18:40Speaker 2: this supplement.
- 18:42Speaker 1: Is there a link to this article in your in
- 18:44Speaker 1: your article to the actual.
- 18:47Speaker 2: You always always always people, I can go and read
- 18:50Speaker 2: read the study.
- 18:51Speaker 1: If you want to go to David's article if you
- 18:55Speaker 1: want to actually look at the paper itself or the
- 18:57Speaker 1: research itself and the design.
- 18:58Speaker 2: And it's open access by way, so it's not one
- 19:01Speaker 2: of these ones that it's restricted. You can read the
- 19:04Speaker 2: whole paper. You can dig in as far as you
- 19:05Speaker 2: want to go. It's from the University of South Australia,
- 19:09Speaker 2: I think so. And very very recent twenty twenty five article.
- 19:13Speaker 1: Speaking of pregnant women and medical issues that are also
- 19:17Speaker 1: in the news recently, there's well I'll just segue into that,
- 19:21Speaker 1: but there's been another issue with the very common drug
- 19:25Speaker 1: that people have been talking about the dangers of pregnant
- 19:29Speaker 1: women using that.
- 19:30Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, in the United States, you know, about a
- 19:33Speaker 2: week ago the President looked up and the soupern leader
- 19:40Speaker 2: pronounced that til and old, which you know Australian listeners
- 19:43Speaker 2: might not be all that familiar with. But that's paracetamol
- 19:46Speaker 2: or panadol or a set of minifin as I mean.
- 19:50Speaker 2: Donald had a bit of a bit of trouble pronouncing
- 19:53Speaker 2: that one, but let's just call it panadol for the
- 19:56Speaker 2: purposes of this. So pronounced that pa at all causes autism.
- 20:03Speaker 2: Now that's just nonsense, that's just nonsense. But we have
- 20:10Speaker 2: the leader of the free world telling pregnant women to
- 20:15Speaker 2: avoid just about the only thing they're allowed to take
- 20:18Speaker 2: for pain relief during pregnancy, because mostly they're told to
- 20:23Speaker 2: avoid anything that is likely to actually relieve pain or
- 20:27Speaker 2: in any significant degree because of the potential dangers of it.
- 20:31Speaker 2: And he's basing this on a really flawed study that
- 20:37Speaker 2: was done well, I don't know if it was a
- 20:41Speaker 2: flawed study or just a flawed interpretation of it. There
- 20:44Speaker 2: has been a study of two and a half million
- 20:47Speaker 2: women in the Swedish birth registry, two and a half
- 20:51Speaker 2: men and children in the Swedish birth registry. The Swedes
- 20:53Speaker 2: are very very good at keeping these records and there
- 20:55Speaker 2: are lots of studies that come from these registries that look,
- 21:01Speaker 2: there's about a five percent association between a mother having
- 21:07Speaker 2: taken panidole during pregnancy and the incidents of autism. Now,
- 21:13Speaker 2: as you would be the first to shout there, you know,
- 21:16Speaker 2: correlation is not causation, and in this case, this is
- 21:20Speaker 2: real proof of it, because the thing you've got to
- 21:24Speaker 2: adjust for in these kinds of studies is why was
- 21:27Speaker 2: the mother taking panadol in the first place. Usually they're
- 21:31Speaker 2: not taking it because they like the taste. They're taking
- 21:35Speaker 2: it because they're suffering pain or fever during pregnancy, and
- 21:41Speaker 2: it could be that that's causing the association. But how
- 21:46Speaker 2: do you adjust for that. Well, when you've got two
- 21:49Speaker 2: and a half million children in a database, it's easy
- 21:52Speaker 2: to adjust for them because many mothers have more than
- 21:54Speaker 2: one child, and many of those mothers have one of
- 21:58Speaker 2: the children where they were taking kind of old during
- 22:01Speaker 2: pregnancy and another child where they weren't, And when you
- 22:05Speaker 2: compare those, it goes away entirely. There is no correlation
- 22:10Speaker 2: none whatsoever. And it's a big data set, so we
- 22:15Speaker 2: can be reasonably confident in it. So whoever is advising
- 22:20Speaker 2: Trump saw the first part of that.
- 22:22Speaker 1: I think it's our fk.
- 22:25Speaker 2: They saw the first part of that and left to
- 22:29Speaker 2: Thailand Old causes autism, which is sheer nonsense, as proven
- 22:35Speaker 2: by the second part of it, which says, when we
- 22:37Speaker 2: actually analyze the data properly, there's not even a correlation there.
- 22:42Speaker 2: There's just nothing.
- 22:46Speaker 1: It's like for me, it's like saying, you know two
- 22:49Speaker 1: and a half million children, and however, many millions of mums,
- 22:56Speaker 1: and of them, you know, fifteen percent of them because
- 22:59Speaker 1: of Sweden, fifteen percent of them drove Volvos. So so
- 23:04Speaker 1: fifteen percent and fifteen percent of the Volvo of the
- 23:07Speaker 1: women drove Volvos also had children with autism. That's a
- 23:12Speaker 1: three times the correlation of panadole. You know, I mean
- 23:15Speaker 1: that cause autism. That's the Volvo's cause autism. That could
- 23:18Speaker 1: be the name of the show, except I don't want
- 23:20Speaker 1: to get sued imagine that.
- 23:25Speaker 2: But that's it's a case study in correlation and causation.
- 23:30Speaker 2: It's an absolute case study. And it very rarely are
- 23:33Speaker 2: you able to sew quickly and easily debunk that correlation
- 23:39Speaker 2: well than in this circumstance. And yet you've now got
- 23:43Speaker 2: the US government telling pregnant women not to take, as
- 23:49Speaker 2: I said, just about the only thing they are allowed
- 23:52Speaker 2: to take for pain during pregnancy. And by the way,
- 23:58Speaker 2: this is not advice that's free from danger. Fever during
- 24:03Speaker 2: pregnancy is unequivocally dangerous for unborn children. Yes, and so
- 24:11Speaker 2: what you're saying to the population is tuffed out. Well.
- 24:14Speaker 2: In fact, those are the exact words that President Trump used,
- 24:17Speaker 2: tough it out to a pregnant woman, which is ridiculous.
- 24:24Speaker 1: How do we get to this how do we get
- 24:25Speaker 1: to this spot where Donald Trump's handing out medical advice.
- 24:30Speaker 1: Let's add odds with medical people.
- 24:35Speaker 2: People just anyone capable of reading a scientific study would
- 24:38Speaker 2: say that's nonsense. And it's so it is distressing and
- 24:44Speaker 2: should be, in my view, completely disregarded by anyone. H
- 24:52Speaker 2: And now, mind you, I've still got problems with panadol.
- 24:55Speaker 2: We've talked before about how it actually reduces empathy and
- 24:58Speaker 2: makes you.
- 24:58Speaker 1: More about yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 25:01Speaker 2: So those pregnant women, if they don't want to be
- 25:03Speaker 2: like psychopaths, should definitely avoid panadole. But if they're running
- 25:09Speaker 2: a fever, the risks associated with that are significantly greater
- 25:14Speaker 2: than the non existent risks of it causing autism.
- 25:18Speaker 1: And if you're wondering what David's talk about everyone, we
- 25:21Speaker 1: spoke probably a good year ago about there is actually
- 25:25Speaker 1: a relationship between people who use panadol or panadine or
- 25:29Speaker 1: whatever you call it, paracetamol and they're more likely to
- 25:34Speaker 1: be yeah, psychopaths or sociopaths or whatever.
- 25:37Speaker 2: That's well, it reduces measureable produces empathy. Yeah, and since
- 25:42Speaker 2: that's the core feature of psychopathy, for the four hours
- 25:46Speaker 2: or so that it's affecting you, you are likely to
- 25:48Speaker 2: be less empathetic.
- 25:50Speaker 1: I haven't paid much attention, but as there's been a
- 25:52Speaker 1: lot of pushback in the States to the Grand Medical
- 25:58Speaker 1: Chief Advisor, there has.
- 26:01Speaker 2: Been obviously anyone with any position at all of influence
- 26:07Speaker 2: has come out and said it essentially the same thing
- 26:09Speaker 2: I've just said. But I don't know how much traction
- 26:13Speaker 2: that gets in the United States now, logic doesn't seem
- 26:17Speaker 2: to play a large part in the way that some
- 26:21Speaker 2: people there are behaving.
- 26:23Speaker 1: I'd love to this as not for tonight, but I'd
- 26:25Speaker 1: love to do a chat with you one day about
- 26:27Speaker 1: just your observations on what's happening. I'm pretty sure that
- 26:31Speaker 1: would not be a thirty minute chat. But can I
- 26:35Speaker 1: ask you one question, not but a more global question.
- 26:38Speaker 1: I guess are you Are you worried about the state
- 26:43Speaker 1: of the world in terms of like where it just
- 26:46Speaker 1: seems to be like everybody screaming at everybody and extremism becoming.
- 26:52Speaker 1: I'm not talking about particular political this or religious that,
- 26:55Speaker 1: or but just I don't know. It just seems to
- 26:58Speaker 1: me like a global shouting match at the moment.
- 27:03Speaker 2: I'm a believer in history repeating itself, particularly when it
- 27:06Speaker 2: comes to social behaviors and social structures, and I believe
- 27:15Speaker 2: that we tend to go through a roughly eighty year
- 27:17Speaker 2: cycles of largely progressive behavior, which is everyone helping everyone else,
- 27:25Speaker 2: which gets pushed towards the edge where essentially it's the
- 27:30Speaker 2: rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We're in
- 27:33Speaker 2: that phase at the moment, right at the end of it.
- 27:36Speaker 2: The last time it happened was during the Gilded Age,
- 27:39Speaker 2: just before the Second World War, and I think there
- 27:43Speaker 2: are some real lessons to be learned about how society
- 27:47Speaker 2: looked then and how the Second World War solved it.
- 27:53Speaker 2: And the probably horrible prediction that that leads us to,
- 27:58Speaker 2: which is that the only thing that's going to fix
- 27:59Speaker 2: it this time round is a significant disaster. So that's
- 28:05Speaker 2: a fairly pessimistic look at the world. But that's my
- 28:09Speaker 2: fear at the moment. And I'm currently just for fun
- 28:12Speaker 2: doing a lot of reading about the Gilded Age and
- 28:14Speaker 2: we'll probably write something about it at some point, of course.
- 28:17Speaker 1: You will. Toys fun chatting to you mate, Thank you
- 28:21Speaker 1: for jumping on a Monday night that you don't normally do.
- 28:26Speaker 2: Pleasure.
- 28:27Speaker 1: We'll say goodbye fair but thanks again, David. Yeah, loads
- 28:30Speaker 1: of fun see ye, Thanks TIV, Thanks Tip,