Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / It's the First Annual Wellness, Actually Grab Bag Episode!

Transcript

It's the First Annual Wellness, Actually Grab Bag Episode! · Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Well, hello, Emily and Tamar.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Hi, Perry.
• 0:04
  Speaker 3: Hi.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: So exciting. We have sort of a guest today. We
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: have Tamar Avishai. She's our producer. And Tamar, do you
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: want to tell the good people why we have dragged
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: you into your closet to be on the show with
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: us today?
• 0:21
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: Well, first of all, my closet is my recording booth.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: So let's not denigrate the closet.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I want people to understand that Tamar is so professional
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: that her closet has, like, sound protection on the wall,
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: like next to her clothing. It's a very high end
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: professional look here.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: Yes. Thank you. So today we have actually solicited from
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: our listening audience, smaller wellness fads that people have questions about,
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: but that might not necessarily take a 45 minute deep dive.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: And in fact, I'm only going to give you three
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: minutes per deep dive. But we'll explain all the rules
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: at a later time.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: So I love this idea, although obviously I'm going to
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: be the worst at this game. You're going to lose.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: At this game that we're playing.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: No chance for you here.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I know.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: That's fine.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: This I know, but that's okay. Because when we do
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: what we do, our friends come up to us and
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: people come up to us all the time and they're like, oh,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: you should talk about vampire facials and stuff. And we're like, oh,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: that's a great topic. But then as Emily and I
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: bounce it off each other, we're like, I don't know
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: that we have an hour to spend on this. Like
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: it's a kind of quick thing to talk about what
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: the deal is. And there were enough of these that
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: came in that we came up with the idea of like,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: what if we did a grab bag? What if we
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: just did all those little things that can get answered quickly? Now,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: to be fair, as I was doing some research, I
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: was sort of like, oh, okay, we could build some
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: of these out, I think, into a deeper episode. But
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: for now.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: For sure, we could. But I think we can hit
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: the high points of most of these in three minutes.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: And then I decided it should be competitive because I
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: spend much of my life answering questions on Instagram where
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: I only get 90 seconds. And so I'm very confident
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: in my ability to win. And that's when I like
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: to introduce competition, when I know this is going to
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: result in success.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: This is the same reason my son always wants to
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: play chess with me, because he knows I'm pretty easy.
• 2:23
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: We've got Tamar fully closeted.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: Without a dog in this fight, I should add.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: We'll see.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Let's get started.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and a data expert.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: And I'm Perry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: It's Thursday, September 24th, 2026, and this is Wellness Actually.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Because you're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: information nowadays from every source imaginable. And some of it
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: is awesome.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: And some of it is, well, actually bullshit. Fortunately, we're
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: both people who know how to read studies, how to
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: parse the data, and can tell you what's worth thinking
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: about and what you can safely ignore.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: But before we dig in, a note that this podcast
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: is for educational purposes and should not be construed as
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: medical advice. We don't know your unique situation, so talk
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: to your doctor for personal health decisions.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: This week, we're doing our first ever Wellness Actually Grab
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Bag episode. You asked, we're answering. But first, the health
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: news of the week after the break. And now for
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: the health news of the week. Perry, I want to
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: start with an article in the BMJ, which is a
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: prominent medical journal. This is an investigation about the U.S.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: vaccine adverse event reporting system, which basically argues that some
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: combination of the, particularly the CDC, maybe a little bit
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: the FDA, did not appropriately report the COVID vaccine complications
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: out of this reporting system they have. The article is
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: pretty in the weeds, but I think it's important enough
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: that we should talk about it.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right. This is a challenging one, but we'll
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: try to keep it to the high level thing here.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: And this is important because obviously the COVID vaccines are
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: surrounded by a lot of conspiracy theories. There's a lot
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: of genuine concerns about them. There's a lot of positive
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: things about them. And you just get so much information,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: especially if you're online, from people that, you know, to
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: be honest, I think are often cherry picking data to
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: push their particular point of view here. So let's try
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: to keep it to the facts. This is reported by
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: David Willman in the BMJ. So first thing to note, VAERS,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, is a disaster of a dataset. Um,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: this is a system that anyone can report to without
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: any documentation whatsoever. You don't have to prove that you
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: got a vaccine. You can literally say anything in this system.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: And so that's why in VAERS, you have reports of,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: for instance, people saying that the vaccine turned them into
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: the incredible Hulk.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: Like that's.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: That is a real actual.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: That is real. That's in the data set. So there's
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of crap in there. Um, Nevertheless, you know,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: the thought is that maybe you can use some statistics
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: to tease out rare signals of harm. And this is
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: all about rare events. And because when you do a
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: clinical trial, even if you do a trial of 10,000,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: 20,000 people, you know, things that happen to one in
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: 100,000 people or one in a million people might not
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: show up. And nevertheless, if you're giving the vaccine to
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: 300 million people, well, you know, it might be relevant.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: And so we have these systems to try to capture
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: those adverse events. And what the CDC had said is
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: that they have two statistical approaches to analyzing VAERS for
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: these signals. One was going to be done by the
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: CDC called proportional reporting ratios, which basically compares the rates
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: of things you see in VAERS to the background rates, right?
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: So like, are there more strokes than you would expect
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: reported and things like that? The FDA was going to
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: use a technique called an empirical Bayesian technique, which is
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: a little more complicated. And then they would compare results.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: And so they sort of had these two approaches coming
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: together to find rare signals in the vaccine. Now, what
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: the reporting shows is that the CDC basically never did
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: their analysis, the proportional reporting ratios. Rochelle Walensky, director at
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: the time, said the Bayesian approach that the FDA was
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: using was more robust. And so let's just go with that.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: That sort of flew under the radar. Now what we
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: know is that the FDA approach, this Bayesian approach was
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: not sensitive enough. So one of the differences in these
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: approaches is that the PRR approach that the CDC was
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: going to use is very sensitive. It has, it finds
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: a lot of false positives. So like if you have
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: like two weird events in the data, right, two people
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: with what's a rare condition, um, two people with like
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: some rare cancer or something, the CDC approach would have
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: like blown that up as a signal. And so you
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: get all these false positives, which I get in sort
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: of the political environment we were in, all those false positives.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: I see the motivation to be like, well, people won't
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: contextualize these properly as just things to keep an eye on.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: The Bayesian model is not that sensitive, and you can
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: miss true positives with that. So they go with the Bayesian,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: and the reporting shows that when the myocarditis data was
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: coming out, largely from the military in the U.S. and
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: from Israel— People at FDA were like, why? We don't
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: see a myocarditis signal in VAERS. Like, we should. We
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: believe it exists. Like, it is a true effect in
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: young men. But it wasn't picking it up. Now, the
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: statistical reason was because in the U.S., we vaccinated older
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: people first. So myocarditis cases were quite rare, whereas in Israel,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: they did their whole population. And of course, in our
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: military studies, we did vaccinate younger people. That's why it
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: came up. But nevertheless, it wasn't shown.
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: And....
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Because of that, because of the sort of failure to
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: appropriately do the statistics they did, we were delayed on
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: the myocarditis signal, which, though very small and very rare
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: and restricted to young men, is probably a real side
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: effect of the vaccine.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, look, my takeaway from this, beyond the kind
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: of everything with COVID was so politicized and complicated that
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: it's hard to know what to learn for the long term,
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: is that this data approach to rare events sucks and
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: is terrible. And the, the core, so just to be clear,
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: the reason these two approaches to this differ are that the,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: this empirical Bayes approach, Bayes approach basically like downweights things
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: that it doesn't expect. That's like a colloquial way to
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: put it, but they kind of, one of the inputs
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: to that is sort of, is a prior, is like
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: how likely do you think this is? So it basically
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: shrinks rare events towards zero because it, thinks of them
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: as like probably an accident or more likely to be
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: an accident relative to this other approach. So these are
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: both reasonable approaches to the data. Both approaches, in fact,
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: any approach you take to the data would be vastly, vastly, vastly,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: vastly better if your data collection system was not any
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: idiot can put in anything that they think for whatever's
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: into your data. That's not a very good... And we
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: have some slightly better versions of this. There's a thing
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: called the Vaccine Safety Data Link, which is a doctor-reported
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: version of this. There, of course, would be other approaches.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: It would be much, much, much, much, much better, which
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: is like national surveillance of various things. So it's a
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: complicated problem, but I think the core for me is
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: just our data stinks, and therefore it makes it very
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: hard to learn from because any approach you're taking is bad.
• 9:53
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: What this doesn't change is the thing that everyone knows
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: at this point in time already, which is that there
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: is a rare myocarditis risk in young men. Most people,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: you know, don't need to worry about that. Okay. Emily,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: while we're talking about vaccines, I'm going to play a
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: clip from you from President Trump who has a new
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: idea to reduce the rates of autism in this country.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Here you go.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: I can't wait. I'm excited.
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: We're also going to be recommending, not recommending, demanding the
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: drug companies with respect to a certain situation. Maybe you
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: want to mention, discuss it, but the autism, that they
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: make their doses in 20% shots. So you have shot one,
• 10:44
  Speaker 5: shot two, shot three, shot four, shot five.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: So the Childhood vaccine schedule, each of these vaccines being
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: broken up into five separate visits, I think makes a
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: lot of sense. Let's move on.
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: No notes. So first of all, just to be clear,
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: there's no evidence that vaccines are linked to autism. So
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: the premise of this discussion is poor. Second of all, actually,
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: vaccines don't work like that. So they are dosed to
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: an amount of vaccine virus or killed virus that prompts
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: an immune response. And so actually giving it in five
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: doses of 20% could easily result in no immune response
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: because you wouldn't have enough to respond. It's not like
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: it adds up like this. That's not how it works.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Any version of this would require extensive clinical trials of
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: dosing at this to make sure that people responded, which
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: they probably wouldn't. There's no approved vaccines like this. People
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: would be much less likely to get vaccines if they
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: went in, had to go in five times.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Try to schedule five visits with your pediatrician.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: This is a bad plan. This is a bad plan.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: And I don't approve it. And I also think it's
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: very unlikely that we will get this plan because it
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: doesn't actually make any sense.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, we need to call out the overriding issue here,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: which is that You know, this is classic moving of
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: the goalposts of the vaccine autism link. So, you know,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: people first were like, oh, it's the thimerosal, it's the
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: mercury preservative in vaccines. That was studied. And in fact,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: in many vaccines, the thimerosal was removed in the favor
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: of other preservatives. no change in autism, no link to autism.
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: It's not that it's the, um, you.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Know, too many, too many, too many of the time.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: It's, it's too many all at once. And it just
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: like all these things kind of keep moving and moving, moving,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: and there's no evidence for any of it. And so,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: you know, and, and in the end you're coming up with,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, legitimately unworkable. This is a legitimately unworkable plan.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Like any parent knows that you're not getting your kid
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: in five times a year for like the first 10
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: years of their life to get the requisite vaccines. It's
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: not going to happen.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: It doesn't make any sense.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: But good news. If you don't get vaccines or in
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: some other way you need treatment for a disease, Montana's
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: got a new plan for you, Perry. They've approved a
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: proposal to allow drug companies to sell non-FDA approved drugs
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: in Montana. And I want to read you one sentence
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: from an article about this, which I think is just
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: the summary. Startup biotech firms told Politico they hope Montana
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: will serve as their shortcut around the Food and Drug
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Administration's costly and extensive drug development process to the United States'
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: vast and lucrative drug market. So, I mean, with that argument,
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: I don't see how we could go wrong with that.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, as long as we have the best interests
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: of the shareholders at heart, I think that's our North Star, right?
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: This FDA, it's the worst. They're constantly with the testing
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: and the safety. It's like, what a bunch of losers.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. Such a buzzkill. They are disruptophobes. So this
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: is kind of related to the right to try movement,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: but I think there's some really significant differences that I
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: want to touch on. So right to try was a
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: legitimate debate where it was like, if you have a
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: terminal condition and there's a drug that has been shown
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: to be safe, like it doesn't kill you, it doesn't
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: kill mice, and it doesn't kill people in the phase
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: one trial. Phase one trials are just safety. Like they
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: don't even measure efficacy. It doesn't kill you. Then you
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: should have a right to just like try it because whatever,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: you're going to die anyway. And there's ethical debates about
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: this actually, like whether it is ethical to do that.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: But broadly, the right to try legislation has gone through
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: and there are mechanisms to do this. But there are
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: some caveats. One generally being that, you know, you have
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: to have a life-threatening condition. without other options for treatment,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: and two, that the drug company can't make money off
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: of you, right? This is a, you know, it's supposed
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: to be an altruistic type of thing. Sure, maybe the
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: drug company learns a bit more about their drug, but
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: it's not a profit-making enterprise. Montana says, okay, the phase one,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: the safety data does need to be there. It can't
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: be poisoned. And that's it. So you can have any condition,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: doesn't have to be life-threatening, doesn't have to be anything
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: that doesn't have a treatment. There's no rules like that.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: And the company can charge you whatever they want for it. So,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: you know, they can make whatever profit they want. What
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: this sets up is a mechanism for basically every shyster
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: with snake oil, right, to say, okay, well, fly to
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Montana and I'm going to charge you $ 50, 000 and I'm
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: going to infuse this, you know, whatever I invented in my,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: you know, quote unquote lab that I did, you know,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: minimal safety testing on. And, and that's it. And, and,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: you know, the FDA is there for a reason. There
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: was a time in this country when there was no
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: safety testing and lots of people died. And there was
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: a time when there was no efficacy testing and lots
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: of people got taken advantage of. And actually, safety came
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: before efficacy. The FDA added efficacy testing because there was
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: so much snake oil out there. There was so much
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: stuff that you could buy and whatever that people were
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: selling that no one knew what to do.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I genuinely think the right to try stuff is very,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: very important. And this is not that. And so I'm concerned. Okay.
• 16:25
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: That's it for the Health News of the Week. And
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: now we get to grab bag. And I'm going to
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: invite Tamar in, and she's going to explain the scorekeeping
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: and rules.
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: I actually never left, but here I am off mute.
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: So as I said, we sent out a call to
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: the listeners to give us their short, ridiculous wellness fads.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: We got a really nice response. We ended up only
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: picking 12. So we have 12 that we are going
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: to alternate, you guys. You will get three minutes each.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: I have my timer right here. And you will get
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: a 30-second warning before the time runs out. In terms
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: of our point system, you get two points for staying
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: within the time limit, not too long or too short,
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: by the way. Perry gets an extra point every time
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: he references Star Trek. Emily gets an extra point every
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: time she references endurance running. Both of you get a
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: half point if you say the dose makes the point.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: And you lose 25 points for referencing Mendelian randomization. Okay.
• 17:40
  Speaker 5: All right. I like it.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't want to have to edit out all
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: of the hot mic clipping for how angry Emily gets.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: So end with a smasher pass. And we will have
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: voice memos from people and social media clips where available.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: So does everybody understand the rules? I'm ready. Yes. And
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: the point system. Basically.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Kind of. We're going to trust you on that.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: But I trust you to not be a liar.
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Great.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: Okay. Emily, you are going first.
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: And your question is, do cold showers lead to fewer
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: sick days?
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: Go.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Great question.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: There is a study on this from 2016 in which
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: some researchers in the Netherlands took people and they encouraged
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: them to finish their usual enjoyable warm shower with 30, 60,
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: or 90 seconds of cold water every day for a month.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: And so I guess some people agreed to be in
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: this study. I don't know why. And then they track
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: whether they were sick.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Here's what happened. the people who took the cold showers
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: were actually less likely to take sick days from work,
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: but they just, they got sick just as much. So
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: the cold shower seemed to make them not be less sick,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: but somehow be able to push through sickness or something,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: which I'm not sure is a good thing or not
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: a good thing. This feels to me like The other
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: day when I listened to Andrew Huberman explain to me
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: that if I got in a cold plunge, I would
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: like learn to push through my fears because being in
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: a cold plunge is so awful. So I guess this
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: is like you get in a cold shower and you're like, oh,
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: my God, I'm going to die. And then you're like, well,
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: I didn't die. I guess I can go to work
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: even though I'm sick. Um, so there are some problems
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: with this trial. One is that it's not blinded because
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: you know, if your shower is cold and so maybe
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: it's like the placebo effect, like I feel like the
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Hulk and then I'm like, ah, I can do anything. Um,
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: and also I just, again, I'm not, I'm not sure
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: this is good because just going to work and like
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: getting all your coworkers sick and they've probably aren't taking
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: cold showers. So they're just staying home. So it seems
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: like a bit mixed. This honestly feels to me like
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: a place where if you wanted the answer, you should
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: just try it for yourself because you can totally experiment
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: with your own, you know, we all love to data track.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: You can experiment with your own cold, showers. Um, but
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: I would never do that because, uh, showering is one
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: of life's great pleasures and taking a cold shower, adding
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: 90 seconds of freezing water at the end of my
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: shower just sounds like it would totally ruin my day. Um,
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: so I'm a pass on the cold shower, but I
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: can see someone wanting to experiment with it, but I
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: don't think they should. How'd I do tomorrow?
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: Okay, you've got 40 seconds left. Can you squeeze in
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: endurance running?
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: If you finish running, then you, no, I don't, gosh, okay.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: I only have to, I'm going to work on my
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: next one. I really feel like I'm kind of trained
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: for 90 seconds. And so I'm going to have to
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: get more details.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: I think it's okay if we don't hit three minutes.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: If it's, what if, you know?
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: I was told there was a points system for going
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: too short.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: You can't change the rules, Perry.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: You can't change the rules. Just make up the rules
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: in the middle.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: Okay. You've got eight seconds. Does the dose make the poison?
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: No, actually it doesn't. It turns out it didn't matter
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: whether it was 36 or 90 in the study.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: Okay. Nicely done. Way to start us off. Perry, we
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: have a voicemail for you.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: Go ahead.
• 21:30
  Speaker 6: Hi, Emily and Perry. I've been reading the book, The
• 21:34
  Speaker 6: Body Keeps the Score. And I'm really fascinated by its
• 21:37
  Speaker 6: argument that trauma can have lasting effects on the brain
• 21:41
  Speaker 6: and the body. But I've also heard that some of
• 21:46
  Speaker 6: the neuroscience and the studies the book cites have been
• 21:48
  Speaker 6: overstated or been challenged since it's last been published. And
• 21:54
  Speaker 6: a lot of my friends are recommending this book to
• 21:56
  Speaker 6: other people. I just am curious how much of this
• 21:59
  Speaker 6: book is actually supported by current research and what parts
• 22:03
  Speaker 6: should we be more skeptical of?
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Thank you. Wait, before you start, let me just add
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: that that was actually two clips together. One was the
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: person asking the voicemail question, and the other was a
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: social media video that was kind of explaining what the
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: Body Keeps the Score issues are. So she did not
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: put the sappy music under the question.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Yes, very fair.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: All right, Perry, go.
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: The Body Keeps the Score. For those of you who
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: don't know, this is a 2014 book by Bessel van
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: der Kolk. And the general theory of that book is
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: that overwhelming experiences, especially things like chronic childhood abuse and neglect,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: are not stored in the brain as memories per se,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: but as fragmented physiologic states. So it uses terms like
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: the body gets stuck in threat mode or like you
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: get this overactive.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Amygdala in your brain. This is sort of a classic
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: pop science book in that it does cite some actual research,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: but does that thing where it leans way too heavily
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: on some aspects of neuroscience and ignores a whole bunch
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: of other neuroscience. So what the book leans heavily on
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: is some brain scans that suggest that when people are
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: recalling trauma... part of the brain called Broca's area, which
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: is responsible for speech, goes dark. It's not as active.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: And the leap that van der Kolk makes with this
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: is that, therefore, trauma cannot be addressed with words. It
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: is manifested by physiologic states, and you need to do
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: physiologic things like yoga, neurofeedback, this eye, ocular muscle movement, exercises,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: and in fact, more recently, MDMA-assisted therapy. to actually process
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: all of this trauma. Okay, the problem is that this
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: is probably not true. Like, the argument that trauma doesn't
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: encode memory is pretty wrong. In fact, most of the
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: data suggests that trauma is remembered too well. Like, people
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: have too vivid memories of their traumatic experiences. The sort
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: of classic work on this is called Remembering Trauma from 2003.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: There's also a vibe in The Body Keeps the Score
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: that reminds me a little bit of the like recovered
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: memories vibe that happened or fad that happened. Fad is
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: probably the wrong word. But that happened in the late
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: 90s where, you know, guided by therapists, people were quote
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: unquote remembering experiences in their childhood that actually never happened.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: And that can do a lot of psychological damage, not
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: only to the person in whom those memories are being implanted,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: but But obviously to their family members and whatnot who
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: are being accused of things like abuse.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: 30 seconds.
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: You know.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Overall, forcing people to recognize the lifelong impacts of childhood
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: trauma is good. Yes, childhood trauma is important, but there's
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: no real evidence that these body-based approaches are any better
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: than traditional talk therapy. The past does get encoded in
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: our bodies, and that's why in the Star Trek The
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Next Generation episode, Genesis, the virus that caused the crew
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: to devolve, was effective. Passed.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: Well done.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Pencils down.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: Star Trek.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: I like you got it in the last, like, 20 seconds.
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: Amazing.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: I'm not as good at this as you are. I
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: could have gone for, like, 10 more minutes.
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be better.
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: Totally.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Let's go.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Let's go.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Keep it going.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: Totally.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: Okay. So, Emily, about vampire facials. What's the deal with
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: vampire facials? I saw Kim Kardashian plugging them with what
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: looked like the most excruciating chemical peel with the tagline,
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: feel the power of your own plasma. What the actual fuck?
• 26:02
  Speaker 7: Go.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Okay. So what is a vampire facial? A vampire facial
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: is when you take tiny microneedles and microneedle your face
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: and then they– okay. So let me back up. I'm
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: using my time. First, we take some of your blood
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: and then– not from your face. And then we spin
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: it in a centrifuge so we concentrate the platelets of
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: the blood. And then you prick your skin with a
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: ton of tiny microneedlings and you rub the blood all
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: over it. So the like platelet plasma like goes in
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: and the idea is that these platelets are releasing some
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: kind of like awesome growth factors and they're going to
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: make your collagen work better. And then the microneedling is
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: good because it really gets it in there with all
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: the tiny wounds that you have created. And Kim Kardashian did...
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: post this and it's like, as you might imagine from
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: my description, it's gross. It's like, basically you're like taking
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: blood and like smearing it all over your face. And like,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: it's like you smear the plasma on your face. It's
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: already bloody from all the tiny needles. Um, but if
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: it makes you look good, I think it's totally worth it.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: It's better to look good than to feel good. We
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: all know that.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: Totally. So, okay. So does this work? Uh, not really. Um,
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: there's a little bit of evidence for like acne scarring, um, Maybe, although,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: you know, like whether it's good as better than regular microneedling,
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: not totally clear. For the general kind of wrinkles and glow,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: of course, there are some small studies, presumably all run
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: by the purveyors of the microneedling vampire facial thing. And
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: so it really is not... This is not the secret
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: to beautiful glowing skin. That's Botox. No, just kidding. But yes, actually.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: But not really.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: We're going to have an episode about that, but we
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: can put that aside.
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: 30 seconds.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: OK, but just I just one thing actually very important
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: to say about this is that it actually can be dangerous.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: So there was a an episode in like 2018 in
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: which some people actually got HIV from a spa that
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: was doing these. And so because, of course, there's a
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: lot of blood and and so on.
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: So.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: That is, of course, not a typical complication, but anytime
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: people are taking your blood and doing stuff with it
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: and rubbing it back on your bloody face, you should
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: make sure that they are a reputable location. I am
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: a pass. Hard pass on vampire facials.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: Excellent.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Me too.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: I do like the tagline, feel the power of your
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: own plasma.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's good.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: I don't feel it that often, to be honest. No,
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: you're probably not.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: You need tiny needles in your face for that.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: Okay, Perry. So one more, and then we're going to
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: do a quick score update.
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: What is the deal with the EMF craziness from power
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: lines too close to the house? And I will spell
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: out EMF so you don't burn up the time. That's
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: electromagnetic frequency, like in Better Call Saul, I think. All right.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: I'm going to play a clip.
• 29:10
  Speaker 7: So I've got my EMF reader. Let's walk around and
• 29:12
  Speaker 7: check some common household spots and see how they pan
• 29:15
  Speaker 7: out on the EMF reader. Here's the microwave. We don't
• 29:17
  Speaker 7: use the microwave, but I know a lot of people do,
• 29:19
  Speaker 7: so I figured I should definitely include a microwave. This
• 29:23
  Speaker 7: is the microwave off.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: That's the microwave off.
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: Let me put something in the microwave and see how
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: that changes.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: All right, so this is, whoa.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: The beepy thing beeped more.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: It literally went off just from me clicking. the button.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: It's red. And it's beeping, Perry.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: I hope you're not standing next to your microwave when
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: you're using it.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: It's red and it's beeping. Okay, go. EMF, electromagnetic fields.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: This we could do a whole episode on because there's
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: so much good physics to talk about here. So I
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: really want to put a pin in that.
• 29:56
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: There is some correlational data that living near high frequency
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: power lines has an association with some childhood leukemias. This
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: has been shown in several different places. This is not confirmed,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: not necessarily causal, but it is something that we are
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: aware of. It is completely different than the stuff they're
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: trying to sell you online. So those meters that they
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: sell online for electromagnetic fields. Everything is an electromagnetic field.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Every power outlet at 60 Hertz or 120 Hertz of
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: here in Europe generates an electromagnetic field light coming from
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: your lights generates an electromagnetic field. In fact, the electromagnetic
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: field from visible light is about a thousand orders, a
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: million orders of magnitude stronger than the electromagnetic field that
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: comes from your wifi router or your microwave. So if
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: you're really concerned about electromagnetic fields, you should be living
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: completely in the dark.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm hearing.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: None of these things are ionizing radiation, which has enough
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: power to break chemical bonds and therefore damage DNA, something
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: like UV light. They're all well, well below this. The
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: only reason there's even any consideration for the high frequency
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: lines is because they generate a magnetic field at scale.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: It's about the order of 0.3 to 0.4 microteslas.
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: That is.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Much stronger than a magnetic field that you get from
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: a running current from your microwave, for example, and it
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: can bathe a whole house in it. There's some suggestion
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: that chronic exposure to magnetic fields on that order might
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: have some problems. Again, but very, very rare childhood leukemias.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: And all this other stuff about your household electronics and
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: like your... That's all... It's literally BS. Like it's detecting
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: electricity the same way my little... volt meter, like my
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: live wire detector detects electricity so that I don't shock
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: myself when I'm, you know, changing a light fixture or
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: something like that. Electromagnetic fields is how everything works except
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: gravity and nuclear decay and fusion, I guess. It's everywhere.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: So if my kid is standing in front of the
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: microwave while it's on, is that a problem?
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: No, it's literally not. They don't penetrate the skin. They
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: are non-ionizing. And again, it's much less energy than your
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: kid standing in front of a light. The only reason
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: the light doesn't set off that meter, because it's a
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: million times stronger, is because light has a frequency... that's
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: 10 to the 14th times per second, which is way too,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: flipping back and forth, which is way too fast for
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: the meters to detect. It's just beyond their resolution. Whereas
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: electricity is 60 Hertz because that's how we have, which
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: it can detect. That's it. Otherwise the meters would be
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: blaring red all the time because there's light outside.
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: 30 seconds.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: I'm hearing I need a better meter.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: What you need.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: A more sensitive meter.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: I think the thing people need to take home is
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: that if you, if there's a rift in space time,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: firing an inverse tachyon pulse will close that rift, but
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: you have to do it at all three points in space.
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: Time Wait, was that a Star Trek thing?
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Clearly. Obviously. I'm a pass on worrying about electromagnetic fields.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: It's like worrying about gravitational fields. It's like, welcome to physics.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: It's not an issue. Don't waste your money.
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: Okay. So my very quick mathematical calculation for the points
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: puts Perry at one point ahead.
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: Oh, man.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: So, Emily, you got to step it up.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: All right. Should we take a break and regroup?
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: Take a break and regroup. I need a chance to,
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: you know, take some deep breaths and learn some more
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: things about running.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 33:40
  Speaker 7: All right.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: We're back. And I'm regrouped and I'm going to win.
• 33:43
  Speaker 6: All right.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Let's go.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: Okay. Emily, what is the deal with vibrating plates? Vibrating plates.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Can you please watch this clip and describe what is
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: going on in it?
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, this person is vibrating on a plate, and she's
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: transforming herself. This is a standard before-after, but with vibration,
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: and I think there's an intention to demonstrate weight loss.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of vibrating. A lot of vibrating.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: I'm a smash, by the way, just getting it out there.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: Just putting it out there.
• 34:21
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: So let me explain something that's very important for people
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: as they age, which is balance. So when you think
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: about what are the things you would like to be
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: like a healthy aging person who doesn't crumble to dust,
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: you need to do some strength training to keep your
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: muscle mass and to promote bone health. You should do
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: some endurance sports.
• 34:45
  Speaker 6: Oops.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: And some cardio exercise because that's important. And also, especially
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: for older people, your proprioception gets worse. And so people
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: need to practice their balance. And there's actually some really good,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: simple ways that older people can practice their balance. For example,
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: when you're making coffee, try just standing on one foot.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: Do it near a counter so you don't fall over.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: So I really like if we have sort of older
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: adults listening to this, balance, even for people who are
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: doing all the other things, balance is sometimes missed. And
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: so I want to emphasize it's important to balance. Vibration
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: plates are a vibrating plate. It's a vibration. You stand
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: on it.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: And there are a couple of things people think about
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: these for. The most like actually potentially useful is to
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: increase balance. So if you think about asking someone who's
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: struggling with balance to like stand on top of this
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: while they're also doing some other kind of like squats
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: or something, maybe that would improve their balance more. People
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: have tested that in trials. And it doesn't work. In fact,
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: the people with the vibrating plates may be slightly more
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: likely to fall, presumably because they're trying to do stuff
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: standing on top of a vibrating plate. But at any rate,
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: this is not helpful for balance, which is really the
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: only thing you would want to have it helping for.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: If you are trying to use this for weight loss,
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: if you think it's like that, like one of those
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: things from the 1980s where you were like, it was
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: that strap around your butt and it was like, and
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: like the fat was just going to like, That's not
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: how fat works, guys. Like that's, I'm sorry, but like
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: that's just not how like weight loss operates. You don't
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: like shake off the fat. That's not, that's just not
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: how biology is. And so if you, if you are
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: using your vibrating plate for weight loss, like in the
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: context of a calorie deficit, it will, it will work,
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: but it will not add to the calorie deficit. It's
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: just the calorie deficit.
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: 30 seconds.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: I do know people who really enjoy a vibrating plate.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: And I have at least one friend who occasionally travels
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: with her vibrating plate because she likes to stand on
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: it in the mornings and play like some kind of
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: game on her phone. And that's how she relaxes. And
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: I think that if that's the way you're using your
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: vibrating plate, that's great. If you're hoping to shake off
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: the fat, no thanks. I'm a pass.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: That was actually perfect. perfectly within time. So I'm going
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: to give you an extra point for that.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: I feel like I should get extra points. Thank you.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: I appreciate the extra points.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, okay, that's a new rule, but that's fine.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: I'm cool with it.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: We have a former colleague who used to travel with
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: her squatty potty.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, that I don't judge that.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Is there a travel squatty potty? Has someone made like
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: a foldable one that fits in your carry-on? If so,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: patent pending.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. I think it probably came down
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: with like kind of like a car seat, like.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: All wrapped up. All right.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: Okay, Perry, what is the deal, this is right up
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: your alley, with living kidney donation? The question asker asks,
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: I'd love to hear your take on living kidney donation, Perry.
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: It is something I've been interested in for a long time,
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: and it would be great to hear your thoughts on
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: it as a nephrologist, including the health impacts on the donor.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: This is only tangentially related to social media, but I
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: did some basic research once and was served a lot
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: of sponsored posts of people requesting kidney donations.
• 38:12
  Speaker 5: Go.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: All right. Living kidney donors are heroes, straight up. Let's
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: put some numbers on it. There are roughly 100,000 people
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: waiting for a kidney in the United States right now,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: and we do about 27,000 transplants per year. Um, 6,000
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: of those transplants are from living donors. So the remainder
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: 21,000 or so are from, you know, brain dead donors
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: or deceased, uh, donation after cardiac death donors. So what
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: that means is that around 5,000 people on the transplant
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: waiting list die every year or get too sick to
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: get a kidney, uh, about 13 people a day. So
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: the more living donors we have, the more we can
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: like save people's lives. You have two kidneys and you
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: really only need one. The process of becoming a living
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: donor though is quite intense. And basically when we're screening
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: someone to become a living donor, they go through all
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: sorts of testing basically to make sure that they're never
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: going to have a kidney problem in the future, right?
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: Like they're going to, whatever you die of, it's not
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: going to be kidney disease. So you can't have diabetes.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: You can't be too overweight. You can't have, you know,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: unexplained protein or blood in the urine. There's all this
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: testing that goes on. When a kidney is removed, the
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: other kidney grows a bit and takes over. And broadly speaking,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: there's no health effects. The rate of progression to need
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: dialysis or a kidney transplant yourself among kidney, living kidney
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: donors is about the same as the national average, which
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: is very low. But I will point that out because
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: actually you'd expect it to be better. Like these are
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: patients who are screened to be very healthy from a
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: kidney standpoint. So the fact that after donation, they have
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: the same risk as the rest of us schmoes suggests
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: that there is probably some modest hit as you might expect.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: But the rates of regret after living kidney donation are
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: vanishingly small. Most people are extremely happy about it. I
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: would say if you're interested in this, look into altruistic
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: chains where if you don't have someone you're giving to,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: there are basically people, you know, you want to give
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: to someone who you're a good match for. So there
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: are people waiting for a kidney donor and like their
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: wife isn't a match for them. But the wife has
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: agreed that if the husband gets a kidney from someone,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: she'll donate her kidney to someone she's a match for.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: And they can make these long chains where like the
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: goodness just rolls down the hill. And it's really, it's
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: really a miraculous thing. So, You know, more power to you.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: We do not live in the age of Star Trek
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: where we can use a replicator to, like, create a kidney.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: 30 seconds. I'm hopeful we'll get to that place in
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: the future. Oh, and the last thing I should say
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: is that if you have given a living kidney, if
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: you've donated a kidney, you're automatically at the top of
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: the donation list if you ever need a kidney yourself.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: So instead of having to wait, the average wait in
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: the U.S. is about four and a half to five years,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: depending on your region. If you were a prior living
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: kidney donor and for whatever reason you need a kidney yourself,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: you get one right away.
• 41:10
  Speaker 5: Smash.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: I want to add that my college thesis advisor, Al Roth,
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: who is an economist, did a lot of the design
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: for this like chained altruistic kidney donation.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: So cool.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: So very, very cool.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: Did you guys ever read that Bad Art Friend article
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: from the New York Times Magazine a few years ago?
• 41:33
  Speaker 7: Yes.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: About the woman who was a little bit too proud
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: of her kidney donation. And so she got completely taken
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: down by the Boston area writers.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, no.
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: In group. Yeah.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Worth reading. For sure. All right.
• 41:46
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Be chill about it, guys. But thank you. You're a hero.
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: Okay. Emily, what's the deal with psyllium husk and beta-glucan
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: supplementation for gut health and colon cancer prevention? How about
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: lowering your LDL cholesterol? Powder or pill form? If powder
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: form is more effective, how to really incorporate it into
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: daily life? Go.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Great. So both of these things, psyllium husk and beta-glucan,
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: are sources of fiber. they're not those sources of the
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: same kind of fiber. So psyllium husk is actually our
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: best source of what's called insoluble fiber. Think of that
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: as the fiber, we talked a little bit about this
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: in the poop episode, but the fiber that like really
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: like zooms things out. And beta-glucan, which is like commonly
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: in oats, is a kind of soluble fiber. And so
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: it like kind of glues things together and makes it
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: sort of move more slowly and I don't know, better
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: in some other way. But let me say sort of
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: this question asked about LDL cholesterol, gut health, and colon cancer,
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: and the answers to those things are different. So there
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: is evidence that both psyllium husk and beta-glucan through food,
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: particularly through oats, can improve your pooping. So if you're
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: looking to improve your poop health, getting these things, and
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: ideally through food rather than through, you know, random pills
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: and powders and supplements, like these are things you can
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: get in food, and that is the best way to
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: get them, and they will make your poop better if
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: you're struggling with it. So like smashing for poop. The
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: evidence on colon cancer prevention is much weaker. People have
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: suggested that this is true, but in fact, in trials
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: moving around people's fibroids, in this way, does not seem
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: to prevent colon cancer. And so I think the cancer
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: link is just not there in the same way. And
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: on the cholesterol link, oats actually have been linked. So
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: consumption of oatmeal has been linked to lowering LDL cholesterol.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: So not psyllium husk, which is an insoluble fiber, but
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: the soluble fiber has been linked to lowering cholesterol. But again,
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: ideally getting through food. So I think there's something to
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: both of these especially when you're thinking about poop. But
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: like with many supplements, it's really best to get your
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: stuff through your food rather than through pills and powders.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: So I'm a smash on getting these through food for
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: your poop.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: Okay. 44 seconds left. Anything to add?
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: Harry, do you have anything? I'm going to... Like seed
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: my time. I don't know. I feel like this one. Well, okay.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Just to be fair to me, we did do an
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: episode about poop.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: This is true.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: And so people should go back and listen to our
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: episode about poop if they want to learn more about poop,
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: which you should.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: That's a good citing precedent. I will let this pass
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: for stare decisis.
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: Perry, is salmon full of toxins?
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: The question asker asks, I see posts pointing to research
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: that shows that salmon has more toxins than any other
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: animal protein. Should we be eating it at all or
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: should we be eating it less often? Go.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: OK, so I took a look at the linked Instagram post.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Here are the claims made in this post. Farm salmon
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: is the most toxic food in the world. Farm-braised salmon
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: are sedated and in conditions that make 95% go deaf.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: They use petroleum-based dyes to dye the meat so it's
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: more orange or red. They have higher dioxins, cancer-causing chemicals,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: than beef, chicken, pork, eggs, by about Now, I'm a
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: huge salmon fan. If you go back to our talk
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: about seed oils, we were talking about omega-3 fatty acids
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: and salmon is a great source of the beneficial omega-3
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: fatty acids. It's the best tasting one because I don't
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: like sardines that much. And I do try to eat
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: salmon when I can get some salmon. So let me
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: go through all these claims. Number one, are they the
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: most toxic food in the world? Well, definitely not. The
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: most toxic is the death cap mushroom, which will kill
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: you dead from eating its cap.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: Right away.
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: Right away.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: Clearly more toxic.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: Dead.
• 46:11
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: But maybe in terms of food people actually eat, well,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: then the most toxic would be fugu, of course, the
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: puffer fish that is eaten in Japan.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: Only if you do it wrong. Only if you do
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: it wrong.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: If you do it wrong. Out of population level, the
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: most toxic is pufferfish. Probably aflatoxin mold from poorly stored
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: grain and peanuts that causes liver cancer kills about 100,000
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: people in sub-Saharan Africa per year. So no, it ain't salmon.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: Are the salmon sedated? The farm salmon sedated?
• 46:40
  Speaker 5: No. No.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: That's just not true. They want them to eat and
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: swim and get muscle. So nope, they're not sedated. Do
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: they go deaf? No, but there's a kernel of truth
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: here in that they grow faster than wild salmon and
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: salmon who grow fast develop these crystals in their inner ear,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: which can impact hearing. That's sad. And I guess like
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: farming something, you know, farm animals don't get the best treatment,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't like make it toxic.
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: I don't know.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: It's just, it's neither here nor there for this. Um, okay.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: Do they add this coloring to make it, um, to
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: make the, the, the fish pink? Well, the implication of
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: these posts are that it's done after harvesting, like they
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: put spray some red food dye on. It's, it's not. The,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: the chemical is called astaxanthin and it is added to
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: the feed that the salmon get. Um, it's the same
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: chemical that comes from krill and shrimp that give, it's
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: like chemically the exact same thing. Now, now it is
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: synthesized astaxanthin. So it's made in a process as opposed
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: to being extracted from shrimp and krill. But it's the
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: same thing and it's just mixed with their food. Lastly, dioxins.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: Fish that are apex predators concentrate environmental toxins like mercury, arsenic. Yes, dioxins.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Wild salmon have three times the dioxin as farmed salmon
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: because farmed tend to be raised on plant-based diets. So yes,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: they have dioxins. They're well below the risk levels that
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: are set by the World Health Organization. The dose makes
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: the poison. Don't worry about salmon.
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: Perfect timing.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: I also feel like if we had to outline problems
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: with the diets of Americans, like consuming too much salmon
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: is really like, this feels to me like those reels
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: that are like, This thing that's going around that's like
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: if you add a banana to your blueberry smoothie, it
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: cancels out the flavanols. It's like, I'm sorry. Americans' problems
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: are not that they're eating too many bananas in their
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: fruit smoothies and their flavanols are being canceled out by
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: the other thing. Like, that's not the problem.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: The problem is mostly the Doritos.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: I was just dying when I first clicked on that.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: It was like the most toxic food in the world.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: And it's just like, okay. This is going to be
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: very easy. Mushrooms. There are so many ways we can
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: kill you with food.
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: To be fair, the dose makes the poison also applies
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: to Doritos.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: Totally.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: Definitely.
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: Definitely.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: Okay. Emily, this one is particularly up your alley. What
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: is the deal with pelvic floor therapy? I'm hearing about
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: all these treatments after birth so that, you know, I
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: don't pee when I sneeze. Go.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: Perry trying to resist making an up your alley joke. Well,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: move on.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: I want that time back. I cannot emphasize enough how
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: great pelvic floor therapy is and how much people should
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: be embracing it. So a pelvic floor therapist is someone
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: who helps you train, work, strengthen your pelvic floor muscles.
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: Your pelvic floor is a muscle group that holds up
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: all of your organs. It gets very stressed during pregnancy
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: because babies and uteruses full of water are heavy. And
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: so it is really useful to understand how to keep
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: your pelvic floor organized and strengthened. Everyone should ideally see
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: a pelvic floor therapist before, during, and after pregnancy. People
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: will talk about Kegels, which is when you think of
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: it as like try to tighten your pelvic floor the
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: way you would if you were going to stop yourself
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: from peeing and then hold and release. That's a standard exercise,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: but actually pelvic floor therapy goes way beyond that. And
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: for some issues, Kegels are not actually the right treatment.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: And so you really do want to see a person.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: And this can be just life-changing. I mean, there are
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: a lot of things that happen when your pelvic floor
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: is not strong. It can make it difficult to exercise.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: It can make you pee when you sneeze or when
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: you run. It can cause fecal incontinence. Like this is
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: just absolutely should be something that is covered by all insurance,
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: should be covered by Medicaid. It is something we should
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: be doing for everybody to make their lives easier. I
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: just cannot say enough positive things about how you should
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: all be having access to a pelvic floor therapist. I just, like,
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: you shouldn't pee when you sneeze. And really, there's this whole...
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: like advertisements for, for, you know, pads that protect you
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: against peeing on yourself that are like ladies have little leaks. Like, no, yes,
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: that's totally true. And it's not something to be ashamed
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: of and happens to many of us, but also you
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: should not have to pee yourself when you sneeze. That
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: is not a thing that we should expect out of
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: our lives. Like we should be expecting more of our
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: medical system and our pelvic floors. And we could totally
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: get there. there's a really great person to follow on
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: the Instagram called the Vagina Whisperer. And she talks all
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: about the pelvic floor and she's really great. And she
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: dresses up in a vagina costume, which looks a lot
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: like a hot dog, but not exactly. And so it's
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: like a little bit of fun. The vagina doesn't look
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: like a hot dog. The costume looks like a hot dog. Anyway,
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: Vagina Whisperer, Instagram, pelvic floor, smash. I'm like a heart.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: So could not smash. I'm smashing it incredibly hard.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Can I give Emily an extra point for inspiring speech?
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. We should all be expecting better.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: Men also have pelvic floors, but they don't get as
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: stressed during pregnancy.
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: No, mine was all right.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: Okay. Perry, what is the deal with salt lamps? I've
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: recently seen one on the wall in a real spa.
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: What are they even supposed to do? And do they
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: do it?
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: This is the one thing on the list I had
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: never heard of.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, really? So I have been to a spa.
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: Everyone I know has one in their baby's room.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: I went to a spa that had a room of
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: salt lamp. Like you were surrounded on all sides by
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: pink salt.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: What do they do? Nothing is the answer. But what
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: people say they do, what they say they do is
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: that they release ions into the air. And ions are
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: good for... various reasons. Maybe they clean the air because
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: like ions bind things or whatever. That also works via
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: electromagnetic fields, but whatever. So does everything in the universe.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: That's the claim and that you have it around. It's
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: releasing these beneficial ions and that's all well and good.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: So that's not true. Salt crystals do not ionize at
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: anywhere near the temperatures that you get by putting a
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: 15 watt light bulb inside them. Their sodium and chloride
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: ions are not being emitted. That just doesn't work. That's
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: not how chemistry works. probably don't even want sodium chloride
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: ions necessarily to be stripped apart from the salt lamp
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: because then you could actually form chlorine gas, which is
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: toxic and stuff. But don't worry about it. It's not
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: going to happen at the energy levels within a salt lamp.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: What they are nice for is some nice like red,
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: like dark, dim kind of reddish light, which I think
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: at night, if you're worried about, you know, getting to
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: sleep appropriately and you want to avoid blue light, which
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: destroys melatonin levels, Then yeah, sitting in a dark room
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: with a little pink salt lamp on in the corner,
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: I think seems very peaceful. Maybe read a book. That's
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: what they're good for. But no, they're not releasing ions
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: into the world. There are some dangers associated with them.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: So they can, because they are salt, they can collect
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: moisture from the air and get a little bit wet.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: They sort of sweat a little. And there have been
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: cases of fires started by the water kind of dripping
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: into the electrical circuitry and stuff like that. So I
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: don't know. Be careful about that. You know, salt is important. Okay.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: I'm really stretching here. Salt is important to humans. And
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: we know this because creature M113 from the original Star Trek,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: colloquially referred to as the salt vampire, would... telepathically like
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: appear as.
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: Your loved one.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: This is not a real thing.
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: This is a real thing?
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. And it would suck all of the sodium
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: chloride out of humans and leave you, for some reason,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: like a dried husk on the ground, which doesn't seem right.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: 30 more seconds of this for you.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: Please, not 30 more. So you shouldn't be a dried
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: out husk when it sucks out the sodium chloride, right?
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: If anything, you should be like a wet blob, which
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: I think is the better way. To have done it.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: If you do run into a salt vampire, I would
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: say spritz them with water. I think that's the... Maybe
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: holy water. Solution. So I'm a pass.
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: Not too close to an electrical outlet.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: I'm a pass on salt lamps and vampires.
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: Okay. Quick score update.
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: So.
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: Emily has been very inspirational and sticking right to her
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: time limit. And Perry has been adding a lot of
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: Star Trek in. I feel like it's almost like you're
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: trying a little too hard, I think.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, that last one was real.
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: That was a stretch.
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So I'm going to say you're tied.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: Which means.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: I think you're just making this up, but okay, fine.
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: It's all riding on these last two answers. Okay?
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: Emily.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: Emily. We have a voicemail for you to listen to.
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: Hey, Emily and Perry.
• 56:36
  Speaker 7: This is Sandy from North Carolina. My question is about
• 56:39
  Speaker 7: jawline or chin masks, which influencers claim will give me
• 56:43
  Speaker 7: a defined jawline and reduce puffiness under my chin. I'm
• 56:46
  Speaker 7: someone who's always had a soft jawline, always carried a
• 56:49
  Speaker 7: little bit of extra puffiness in that area, and so
• 56:51
  Speaker 7: is my sister. So my question or series of questions is,
• 56:55
  Speaker 7: why do some people just seem to have a puffier jawline?
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: And what, if anything, could I do about mine?
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: Do these masks work? How could they possibly work?
• 57:03
  Speaker 6: Thanks.
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: Go.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: Sorry, pause time. The question, how could they possibly work? Like,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: I love that. Like, if we ever make t-shirts, I
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: just want, like, that idea is so, like, how could
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: this ever work? But okay. Sorry, go ahead.
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: So in case you are also not super familiar with these,
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: these are the, like, one of these, it's like a
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: sheet mask. You put it under your chin and you
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: sort of typically hook it around your ears and it has, like, a,
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: like a disposable, it's a disposable mask. It's got a gel,
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: a hydrogel, it's soaked in something. And, you know, they
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: typically have a variety of different random stuff in them,
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: but like the kinds of things you might have on
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: this thing is like collagen or hydralonic acid, plant extracts, caffeine,
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: sometimes there's like some menthol to make it seem cooling, etc., Uh,
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: and the claim is that they will reduce this puffiness.
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: First of all, why do some people have a puffier
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: jaw than other people? I don't know. People have different genetics.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: Your face has a different shape. Some people have, you know,
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: a bigger nose. Some people have more prominent cheekbones. Some
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: people have like a tiny giant forehead.
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: Who knows?
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: Like just everyone has a different shape face and that
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: is why your jaw looks away. I don't know. That's it.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: So there's no real answer to that question. If you
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: put one of these things on, it will not lead
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: to a long-term difference in your jaw shape. It could
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: like very briefly work depending on exactly what's in it.
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: So one thing is if you just like really snug
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: and kind of push fluid out of the tissue and
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: then temporarily make your face look a little bit different.
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: It's like the same reason like a cold compress works.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: Kind of changes the puffiness in your face sometimes. It's
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: also like a moisturizer. And so, I don't know, moisturizers
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: are always nice. Um, caffeine is a vasoconstrictor. Uh, and
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: so if you put caffeine all over your face, uh,
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: it could actually slightly reduce swelling. These are all like
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: sort of short term effects. And so it's a little
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: bit like if you're dying to look good, like 20 minutes, uh,
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: From now and you want a marginal improvement that only
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: you could see but could make you feel better about
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: yourself due to the placebo effect, this could be something
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: to try. But there really isn't any actual evidence for this.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: And that's it. You don't need this. And I will
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: just extend this to say a lot of my Instagram
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: seems to lately be full of these people who like
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: wake up in the morning and and remove like an
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: absolutely astonishing number of different like stickers from their face.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: And I, there's really no evidence for any of the
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: face stickers. So it's not just the chin sticker. It's
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: the eye stickers, the forehead sticker, the like mouth sticker.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: Don't sticker your face. Pass.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: Okay. Last one. Perry, what is the deal with black people?
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: cumin seed. Any evidence for black cumin seed for lowering
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: LDL cholesterol and blood glucose? If yes, what is the
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: recommended dose and how to incorporate it into your routine
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: if using powder form? And I, Tamara, personally, I'm adding
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: turmeric here also. What's the deal with turmeric? Because it
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: seems like they're related because it's delicious. And also I
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: see it advertised in pill form every time I go
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: to Costco.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: Go. Okay.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: So there is some evidence for these things and we
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: shouldn't necessarily be surprised because they are plants and plants
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: have compounds and chemicals in them and chemicals can be
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: biologically active. And there are a slew of biologically active
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: things that you can put in your mouth and eat.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: And broadly speaking, most of our pharmaceuticals came about in
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: this way, right? Like aspirin came from willow bark and
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: eventually they figured out the thing that was making you
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: feel better when you chew willow bark and they isolated
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: aspirin and now they synthesize aspirin and that's what it is.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: And that is basically what's going on with black human
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: seed and turmeric. Black cumin has an ingredient in it
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: called phymoquinone, which is an HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor. That is
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: the same mechanism of action as the statins. So black
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: cumin has like a little statin in it. And it does,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: in fact, lower cholesterol modestly. Randomized trials show about a
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: 15-point LDL reduction for what it's worth. It's fat-soluble, so
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: the oil form of black cumin seed worked a little
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: better than the seed form, which isn't as readily absorbed.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: For turmeric, not quite as potent. There is also some
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: cholesterol-lowering effects, about 5 mg per deciliter of LDL. It
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: also has, in randomized trials, some reduction in fasting glucose
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: up to about 10 mg per deciliter. So the unifying
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: thing here is these are all quite modest compared to
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical grade stuff that you can get in terms
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: of reducing LDL. And broadly speaking, I don't advise people
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: to get their medications from unregulated things and plants. Like
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: if you want to incorporate it into your diet, because
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: like whatever, you like the taste or you just kind
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: of generally want to be healthy, but it doesn't work
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: as well. And it's not as pure as what you
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: get from pharmaceutical companies. I know people think it's like, oh,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: it's natural, you know, and it's got to be better,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: but that's called the naturalistic fallacy. And there's plenty of
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: things in nature that will kill you dead, as we've
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: talked about earlier today, right? Like, so there is value
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: in pure substances created in a lab to lower your
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: cholesterol and your blood sugar. There's also other stuff in
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: these seeds. There's a lot of other compounds that might
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: be interacting with other medications or cause off-target effects. So generally,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: it's not a great idea. Now, this is not a
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: stretch at all.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: There.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: are good studies that black tea has compounds in it
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: that reduce cholesterol actually by a similar amount, about 15 points.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: There's also studies that suggest that bergamot has a modest
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: LDL reducing effect. Now, if you combine black tea and bergamot,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: you get the classic flavoring of Earl Grey. So if
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: you really want to lower your cholesterol, I suggest you
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: drink tea, Earl Grey, hot.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 5: That.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: Is a Star Trek reference. Pass on cumin and turmeric.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: I think Perry won.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: I gotta say.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: I have to say. I think he won. Yeah, he
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: kind of slipped that right in at the end. He
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: should have gotten like infinity points for the pelvic floor speech.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah. But.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: Absent that, I think he's the winner.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm willing to take a tie on
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: this because I think if you started a political campaign
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: where the number one platform was pelvic floor health, you
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: could take 2028M. I'll be behind you. There's nobody else
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: as far as I can tell.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: Who cares about people's pelvic floor?
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: No, no, just in general.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: Definitely not.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: There's no other competent person.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, there's just no other good options.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: But Perry, on the other hand, my husband will not
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: really enjoy listening to this episode.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: I hope so.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: Okay. Well, as official scorekeeper, I will say that you
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: two are both my boss equally. So it was a tie. Congratulations.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: Very impressive. Thank you very much.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: And thank you to everybody for your questions. This was
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: a delight. And we will do another one at some
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: point in the future.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: Keep those questions coming in. We do a question of
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: the week every week. You can submit your questions at wellnessactually.fm.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: Leave us a voice memo. It's so fun to hear
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: people's voices if you can. Or an Instagram clip is
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: good too. And that is it for us for this week.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: Thank you guys so much for having me this week.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: We always love to have you, even when you're not
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: on the camera. So that's it for us today. Stick
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: with us next time when we'll ask, what's the deal
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: with Botox? Wellness Actually is produced in association with iHeart Media.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: Our senior producer is Tamar Abishai. Our executive producer at
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: iHeart is Jennifer Bassett. Our theme music is by Eric Deutsch.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: And our content is for educational purposes only.
• 1:05:37
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• 1:05:39
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• 1:05:42
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• 1:05:45
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• 1:05:49
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• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: over to wellnessactually.fm and leave us a question for our
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: mailbag or suggest a topic for a future show.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: We'll let the influencers have the last word.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 4: Kim Kardashian and her cringeworthy bloody vampire facial. Did you
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: see what was happening in social media? She got a
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: facial using her own blood.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: You gotta see this to believe it. Let's watch it. Okay,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: we're gonna start. Beautiful. More blood here. A little bit
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: more PRP.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 5: I know this is very sensitive area.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 6: That hurts right there.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: Around the bone. Oh, that hurts so badly.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 5: Oh, help. One more line and we're done. All right.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: That's it.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: You're set.