Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Asafoetida

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

If you're like Dr. Sydnee and your TikTok algorithm keeps advertising medical substances at you, perhaps you've heard of asafoetida. It's a pungent resin derived from a plant, and has culinary appeal as well as reportedly some medical benefits. But what, if any, research and evidence do we have about these medicinal claims? And most importantly, what does it really smell like? We need to know, for science.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, Tommy is about to books. One, a marital tour of Miss Sky at medicine. I'm not the farthest mountain mountain. Hello everybody and welcome to Sawbones, a marital tour of Miss Guy, the medicine. Me, I'm your co-host, Justin McRoy.

And I'm Sydney McRoy. And what a thrill it is to be back here with you, Sitzer. I always love doing sawbones, but this is one that I feel very proud of because I accidentally found out about it and told you about it. That's right, where did you find out? What was the episode you found out about this?

It was when I was looking at farting. Farting, I think. Farting, yeah. It was about farting. It was like care for farting or it was fart-related, fart-farting. It was definitely fart-related. Do you remember what we're talking about today? Would you like to?

I can't pronounce that. I'd prefer you to this. Asafatida. Asafatida. Asafatida. Asafatida. Yes.atida. Asafatida. Yes, I looked at the pronunciation multiple times. Asafatida is what it looked like to me.

Yeah. If I'm remembering what all those little symbols, the upside downy and all that stuff means. All right. I hope I'm stressing it right. I'm a stress in me by worrying about it. It's got to be of esfetida. Anyway, I said it like 30 times as I was researching this out loud, just like I'm just

sitting there by myself typing away and looking up stuff with a computer going asfetida. Asfetida. By myself. Anyway, yes, you brought it up and I thought it's funny because it's related to something else that I have researched like with the thought this would make a good saw bones before and had never really dived into. Dauvin.

Dauvin. Diven. But this is a substance that you may be familiar with depending on what you're cooking background is, what sorts of like regions of the world, you're cooking history and culture comes from you may be familiar with this substance. You may have seen it advertised online as a supplement. Oh really? Yeah. I mean probably not. I've I've self-selected my algorithm pretty well, but. Well, if you're me and you do a medical history podcast that sometimes covers

pseudo science, then you probably have seen it advertised to you because I get all the supplements, all the oils, all the herbals, all the... I know, it's destroyed. Everywhere thinks that I'm really into this stuff. Like, I'm on a list of list of who goops targeting somewhere. Goop is looking for Sydney, and Goop can't get Sydney to buy anything. She doesn't buy anything, but she's fascinated by this. She's really interested in this stuff. She goes to Goop all the time. So, Asafetida is a dried latex gum. It's from the root of a certain herb. It's in the celery family, it's related to fennel, it's called feroola. There's actually several different species that you can get the substance from. It's not just from one species of plant. It's native to Iran and Afghanistan.

And it's not, it's a resin, really. It's not an herb. It's from an herb, but it's not, it's a resin, really. It's not an herb. It's from an herb, but it's not the herb, right? It's not leaves. It's not a spice. It's not seeds. Like maple syrup. Maybe.

Which is a sap. There's a goopy. Saps are resin, basically. Saps and resin. You tell me the difference right now. I'll, I don't know, I'll save the laundry for a month. Botany was not my favorite of the sciences. I took, I may have mentioned this before. I took

Plant Tech'sonomy. Man, that was the hardest class. I will do my organic chemistries over again any day of the week, overtaking Plant Tech taxonomy again, memorizing the names of plants, and then understanding like to count if I just don't. Generally, sap is a relatively clear and thin watery substance, while resin, also called pitch, is an amber colored thick gooey and tacky. Maple tree sap used to make maple syrup

is essentially water with a mild sweet taste. So there you go. There you go. Sap is basically just sugar and water. So there you go. There you go. Sapp is basically just sugar and water. So this is a resin. You take it from the roots that are at least four years old. It hardens into these little pieces that they call tears because that's what it looks like.

A tear. Tear-shaped? Yeah, tear-shaped. And then you can press them all into big lumps if you want. I do. You want to press them into lumps. Yeah, like compressed into lumps. And then once you've got them into a big enough lump, you grind them into a powder.

And this is the powder is the substance that we're talking about. Don't leave steps, but I don't know why I'm doing any of it. I'm doing it just to keep up. You've still got to mix it with some starch. Oh, okay. I got that right here. So like rice powder, something to keep it smooth. Okay. Okay.

So this is what we're talking about. This is the thing as Fetida, like really, you can look up, like you can buy bottles of it if you want. I'm not suggesting you do that. I at this point have no idea why I would do that. It is known sometimes as devil's dung in English-speaking countries,

because it smells terrible. Okay. Well, I shouldn't say it smells terrible. I have not smelled it. The popular conception is that it smells bad. It has been, the word that I saw most frequently used to describe, it smell is pungent. And I have found that pungent can be many things.

Yes, there are some pungent smells I enjoy. Pungent is very subjective. But it has a very strong pungent odor. Again, I haven't, I've never smelled it that I know of. I don't think I have. When we're here, pungent, I always think of sex panther from a girl man. Oh, it's pungent. It's burned faster. I grew up in a young age. I grew up in a young age. I grew up in a young age. I grew up in a young age. I grew up in a young age.

I grew up in a young age. I grew up in a young age. I grew up in a young age. I grew up in a young age. I grew up in a young age. I grew up in a young age. I grew up in a young age. I grew up in a young age. I very important in the ancient world. So, there was something called sylphium.

And sylphium was so important that it was actually one northern African city, Syrene. It is on their coins. Like, if you look at coins from this place in ancient history, it is a picture of the sylphium plant on the coin because it was as valuable as any money that you could exchange at the time. It was an incredibly important plant in the ancient world. It was used in a variety of ways by the ancient Greeks, by the ancient Romans. It was thought to be a contraceptive, so it was something you could use to prevent. How am I correct? Or early?

It was prepared in a variety of ways. It was on herb and you could prepare it in a variety of ways. It was used for medicine. It was thought to be an aphrodisiac. It was used as a seasoning in food. It was used as a perfume. I think that it's funny that something that would be an aphrodisiac would also be thought to be a contraceptive.

Yeah. Well, that seems useful. That sounds like the part, yeah, sounds like a great dual purpose. Well, when you hear that though, doesn't it make you think like wishful thinking? That would be nice, wouldn't it? But it doesn't seem right. It was a relative of fennel probably, although like none of it exists today. So like this is what we think it was.

We think it was a relative of fennel, which is why we think it's probably related to Asphotita. It was basically, it was so popular that it was used and grazed and sold into extinction. So I got the last bit, and they're like, I should replant this really, but I do need it. Somebody did get the last bit. The last bit, did get the last bit. The last bit, Plenty of the Elder said that the last bit that was ever in existence was sent to Nero. That's what Plenty wrote. Like, yeah, the last piece was sent to Nero is like, look at this thing that once existed

and isn't here anymore, you can keep it for your collection of things. Oh, nice. I just throw this away for you, no problem. Yeah, I'll just throw this weed away. What is this weed you sent me? Why did you pick it up? Why didn't you plant it again? Why didn't you plant it again? Plenty I mean, Plenty didn't send it No, it wasn't no it wasn't he wrote about it

No, no, let's call it what it is someone lied to Plenty about what happened to it. He's like nice I'll put it in history and just like all the other all the other lies Plenty do to play recorded it in natural history Plenty put this in history real quick. Write it that Nero got the last chunk of that, the so-fume. That would be very rare. Put it in history. I feel like periodically we bring up

plenty of the elder on the show. We should make the disclaimer, because not everyone will have listed to listen to the entire decade of saw bones episodes that we have now produced. We love plenty of the elder. We don't think that his book, Natural History, is awful of lies. That is a joke that we are making. He does make many medicinal claims about various substances on planet earth that are not evidence-based. Plenty is not big on evidence-based medicine.

Which I would argue maybe calls into question a lot of the fastest in there. Like maybe there's not true story he heard. No, no, no, because he wrote about stuff. Like he was just like, here's a plant that exists. Here's a rock that exists. Here's a thing. Like, and like that stuff isn't necessarily untrue. It's just when he's like, and you know what it's good for, that's when you've got to start to raise an eyebrow. Like, is it though, Pliny? I understand. Is it that? I feel like we should throw that out there. Because if you just started listening recently,

you may think, why did those guys hate Plenty the other? We don't. We love Plenty the other day. We did a whole episode on it. I wrote a song about him. We love Plenty the other. Anyway, so Sylphium, by the way, was grown in what is now Libya. And it was in a very narrow region

that's probably part of why it's not around today. It didn't grow in a lot of other places. Hippocrates wrote about sylphium. You can scrape pieces off of it, little piece like get small pieces. And if you're gut protrudes, you can take some of this. So like with gas, I think if you're distended with gas, if you're belly swollen and distended. You're not stable done. Mm-hmm. It sounds similar, right?

Like it's used, you're using it for some reason, your gut's protruding, now granted, that could be a lot of reasons. But theofrasthus also talked about the use of sulfium, like I said, plenty of the elder did. When Asfetita was first brought to Europe by Alexander the Great, it was because when it was seen, people thought, wait, is this that selfie-m stuff that doesn't exist anymore? That was part of why it was first thought to be useful. People were stoked about it because it was

not unlike the other thing they used to love. Exactly. That is what we think. Again, this is all sort of what we've pieced together based on writings and the etchings on the coins and things like that from history. No one who's alive ever saw Sylphium. So we don't know. I think that's fascinating. This plant that was used as money. It was so important. You could pay in this plant. And it's just gone. It's gone. It's just gone. We we pave paradise. So parking lot. Yeah. I was about to say the exact same thing. We've married too long. Maybe. So so basically this the substance we're talking about. Yeah. Asphalted. It's collected and everything was moving around back then. Like people would go

places. They'd travel, explore new places, and they'd take their like foods and spices and seasonings and things with them. So like Asfatiida moves around the globe because people use it and they take it with them. Yeah, their travel companion was a lump of sticky, sticky goop. In what we're going to talk about in like it's modern uses and what it's thought to be good for, a lot of that comes from India now. And it probably initially arrived in India from Afghanistan because that's where it grows. As early as 600 BCE. Whoa.

Yeah. So a really long time ago. And you can look back to like Hindu and Buddhist texts. And it's mentioned there, the existence of Asfetita. So we know that it's been around a really long time and that it was used primarily initially as food. So the thing about it, and again, I haven't smelled it. I need to get you someone else. I really want to smell it now, because there's so much talk about its odor.

I guess because of the specific like volatiles, it is reminiscent. I've seen a lot of people compare it to onions or onion and garlic combined. That sort of sharp smell is what, or taste even, is what you got to think about. That is what it's been compared to. So you could use it in place of those things,

if either you didn't have those things or in some religious traditions, you couldn't eat those things, specific spices, you could use it in place of them. And it would sort of give you that same sort of, not identical flavor, but like, I don't know, like the same kind of bite, I guess you would say that onions and garlic have, they do it's pleasant, but it's a little aggressive. That sort of place. But obviously, even though it was very popular and cooking when it came over to the Europeans, the Europeans were like, oh my gosh, this is an overwhelming smell for us.

Too much. Yes. And so they called it double- Dung or Stinking Gum. And again, it was often used in various dishes in place of onions and garlic. If you're curious as to what's in it, like what is this stuff, it's only like four, depending on how much

where you're getting it from, which species, whatever. It's only like four to 20% of the volatile oils that we're probably talking about. The stuff that would be like smelling and tasting and you would theorize would have any sort of activity if you were going to apply a medicinal sort of thing to it. The rest of it is just like the gum and the resin that's in there sort of sticking all these oils together. The essential oil part of it, all of the different things have a lot of sulfur in them. Oh, okay. It's probably some of the color too, right?

The color and the odor. That's where... They have found different phytochemicals in there. There are things like cadenine and vanilla. What's phytochemical? Plant-based chemicals. Oh, yeah. And there are all these other things that are found in the resin as well, specific substances

that are found in the resin. But if you're wondering, why does it have such a strong odor, where does this come from? It is because a lot of those volatile oils that give it its odor, give it its flavor are thought to have medical applications contain a ton of sulfur. Okay. Which I don't know if that gives you clues to what it might smell like. Again, I'm so curious to know what this might smell like.

Sulfur generally, I consider an unpleasant smell. Yeah. So. I don't know. Everything in moderation, right? Does it make the poison, etc., etc.? Yes. So, that's what's in it.

That's how it's used in cooking. What do we think it's good for? Medicineally, why is it a supplement? Why is it something you can buy? Why is it something that there have been studies on to see if it's medically active, physiologically active in the human body? I'm going to tell you about that. But first, first, we got to go to the billion apartment.

Let's go! The medicines, the medicines, the escalate macabre for the mouth. Parentane, it's hard, but don't worry, you're not alone. Belly up to the low bar with one bad mother and let us remind you that fine is good enough. They want to climb on different things. And how am I supposed to keep them both from dying? There is a right way to do this. And if I can figure out that right way, I'm going to be a good parent. So that is not a thing.

So join us each week and let us tell you that you are doing a good job. You can listen to One Bad Mother on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. This week on Bullseye Tom Hanks, as you've never heard him before. Mad! You moron! Thank you for the use of the turn signal.

Way to use your blaker. Idiot. That's Bulls Eye for MaximumFun.org and NPR. Okay, so the modern era of Assa Fatita, I'm ready. Okay, so as I mentioned, it has this, and I think like a lot of substances that would have a strong odor or flavor or something like that were often thought like, well, maybe they do something in the human body. We've talked about this a lot on the show. Right. People assume like smells and

pack full. Yeah, garlic is not dissimilar, right? Why did we investigate garlic for any sort of medical benefits? I don't know. It smelled and tasted really strong, maybe it's doing something. There you go. So anyway, by the way, the name asafetita is from a Farsi word, which means resin and then fatitas means smelling extremely unpleasant. Okay. Yeah. Everyone agreed on this. It really united the world. It's unpleasant smell. So, um, the, uh, in, in ancient Rome is when we start to see again, like, it was used as a flavoring agent as it is today. But, um, and, and they would like dissolve it in hot oils and add the oils to the food and that kind of thing. But they also began to investigate it as something that could be used as some sort of medicine, specifically, like, could it be an antidote? Over the years, they thought it was maybe an antidote for some sort of overdose.

Like, if somebody took opium, would it be an antidote for opium? Maybe just because it's like pungent, it would wake you up. Yeah, sure, yes, valing salts, that's all they have to do is be super stinky. Exactly, it has been used for whooping cough, it was used for hysteria, that was a popular older use for it.

When hysteria was a thing, hysteria is not a thing. No, it wasn't then, but we didn't know that. No, it was never a thing. As it spread across the ancient world, it was used for different, like in China, it was a popular medication used for, like, deworming someone. If they thought you had some sort of worms or, you know, parasitic infection, in Malaysia, it was thought to help start periods. I think it's really interesting, because as you read about its uses, it's like, it was thought to help start periods. I think it's really interesting because as you read about its uses

It's like it'll throw in that it's an aphrodisiac sometimes sometimes that it's a contraceptive sometimes that it'll help start or regulate your periods There are even some traditions that thought it was helpful for fertility Well, come on. We can't have it all those different ways. I feel like if you just keep like throwing the darts Yeah, eventually you're gonna hit all those different ways. I feel like if you just keep like throwing the darts, yeah, eventually you're going to hit all the different things that a stinky gum can do. In Morocco, it was investigated for seizures. In Brazil, specifically, it is used as an average jack for men.

That is that is specifically what you want this for. I wonder how you can assume that because there's a I can't think of a way to consume it that isn't going to mess up the, you know, sexy vibes. If you smell really sulfurous, it seems like that might become a mood killer. Well, but I, you know, like I said, you can buy it as a supplement. So like you look and there's the spice, there's the powder, but you got to wonder are there capsules? Probably, right? powder, but you got to wonder are there capsules? Probably, right.

Right. There's got to be. Certainly they're not expecting you to just take a spoonful and go wild. And I also, I would also wonder, this is another question I have. Did you buy some as we're sitting here? I knew you would. I knew you would buy some for us to try. A lot of these sorts of compounds,

you can buy hunks of the resin too. A lot of these compounds, you're not gonna get that smell until you heat it up. Because that's when you're gonna release the volatile oils. So, and I don't know, this may stink even when you open the jar. I honestly have no way to hide. That's the slogan they use at a label. It may be that as soon as you smell it, it smells like something.

But there are many substances that like you actually have to heat up. So I don't know. Man, I really want, we're going to find this out for ourselves because Justin has ordered some. But if you know more about how this tastes or smells, does the powder smell, does the resin smell, do you have to heat it up to smell? We've got some by the time people are hearing this. I will. Yeah. What do you think it tastes like?

I would love to hear other people's opinions, especially people who are familiar with this substance. I am only familiar with it because you brought it up on our other episode. Yeah. And now I've read about it. I have never experienced it. We'll try it. And I want to know people who use it, like, what do you put it in? I mean, I've read all the dishes people suggested in, but what do you like it in?

Do you like it in barbecue meat? Do you like it in mushrooms? Do you like it in vegetable dishes? I don't like it in mushrooms. You don't like it in mushrooms, you don't like mushrooms. But these are all examples I found of things you can put it in, and I just, I don't know.

I want to know. It's like, if somebody asked about the, what do you do, tell me about pepperoni rolls? Yeah. I could tell you all about that, right? I'm from West Virginia, the home of pepperoni rolls. You would like to hear from people to whom asafoetida is culturally significant.

Yeah, like for people who this is sitting on your shelf of spices and cooking things, like we have many things, like what is this is sitting on your shelf? What do you do with it? I want to know about it. I would love to know those things. It is, as I said,, a lot of where it lives today in both culinary tradition and medicinal tradition is in India, and it is used for a variety of different things.

Digestive complaints, definitely a lot of different stomach things you'll find it as like, oh, you can use it for that. Kidney stones, it's used for sometimes, it's a treatment for that to help. I'm assuming it's thought to dissolve these things, gallstones, any sort of nervous disorders. I found studies to look at things like, can it lower blood pressure? Is that a supplement that would be useful? Again, sort of the same way.

I think it's very similar in my mind to like, the way we talk about garlic. You know how you can get, take a garlic supplement or they'll tell you to eat a bunch of garlic or turmeric, right? It has a lot of this sort of thing. It has been investigated to treat asthma. Oh, well.

Inflammatory bowel disease, or I mean, not, sorry. Can you, can you control bowel syndrome? I mean, you say. Not inflammatory bowel disease, or I mean, not, sorry. Can you, can you continue to bowel syndrome? Can you tell us for me when you say, not inflammatory bowel disease? I use initials. It's been investigated too. Well, what is it, what does that feel like to you?

So there are studies, and that's what I wanted to get to. There are a number of studies I looked through. It was, there was actually a really nice sort of summary article looking at all the studies that have been done on astephoteta, because people have tried to like go about it in a scientific fashion. The problem is, and you know, if you're familiar with like supplements, you know that this is always an issue with this part of medicine, there's no money

in that. Right. There are lots of people selling Asphetita already. So if it does have a medical benefit, it would be very hard for a pharmaceutical company, for instance, to make any money off of that. Right, because it's so common in cheap. Exactly. So you're never gonna find, with substances like this, you're not going to find big giant, double blind,

randomized control studies that do it the way we need to do it, right? Because you have to have, in order for a study to be meaningful, you have to have a certain number of people in it. Right. Because otherwise, it could just be chance. That's what you're always trying to figure out when you do a study. Genal lemonade chance.

You're trying to eliminate that this just happened by chance. If you have two groups of people and one takes something and one doesn't, and then you look at what the effect was, it could happened by chance. If you have two groups of people, and one takes something and one doesn't, and then you look at what the effect was, it could just be chance. So if you have enough people in there, then the study has enough power at that point to mean something. All of the studies that have been done on Asphetita

are pretty small. And also, I did not find, at least in the big meta analysis that I looked at, any done in humans. Oh, okay. There have been a lot done in mice, rats, guinea pigs. A lot of in vitro studies to look at possible effects

of asphoteded to kill bacteria, to kill fungus, to kill parasites. And in all those studies, what you're really talking about is like putting a substance on something growing in a petri dish to see if it like inhibits the growth of it. And these are very fraught because there are lots of things that I can put in a

Petri dish that will kill whatever microorganism you're wanting me to kill, right? Yes. I could dump bleach on it. We have a magnet. We have that magnet. It says, what is it? If you ever hear that something kills cancer cells in a Petri dish, just remember, so does a handgun. Yeah. I'm not recommending that. Please don't shoot petri dishes. Yeah. But the point is that like the problem with studies like that

are that just because I can dump something in a petri dish and kill something doesn't mean I can dump it in your human body and make you better. I always like bleach as an example because I don't know. I guess the gun example is a little flashier. But nobody's gonna do that. But like you can, I mean,

we did have a political leader once who suggested injecting bleach into our bodies. So I think that this is a fair example to you. Fair bit of clarification. Yes, we can't dump bleach into our bodies and kill things, but we could definitely use bleach in a lot of Petri dishes to clean them. And so there are substances that will kill invaders

while not killing us. And that's what we're looking for. There are lots of things where if they're used in high enough concentrations, you can inhibit the growth of bacteria and such. Can you even get those concentrations in the human body and what would they do as a side effect? Right, but no. So that's tricky because natural medicine advocates and how many of how I think people, and stuff like that, a lot of people in all of them are medicine. Use this, like no profit in it

thing as an excuse to why they can't back it up with studies. Like, well, I can't prove this because it's too cheap and plentiful. So no one wants to do the research, trauma. And, but it's hard too because I also, like just because you can't prove it, it doesn't mean it works. Right. And there's also some of these things like,

we have medicines that are very effective at managing asthma. So I would be very hesitant to encourage someone who has asthma and requires, especially like daily maintenance medications, to manage that condition, to try to replace them with something that is unproven. I mean, like the risk in that is so high. Of course. When we, and this isn't a situation where well, we don't have anything so you may as well try this.

I didn't see a lot, there were definitely some studies and this is where things always, especially on our show, we don't like is when you start talking about cancer. You've got a secret cure for cancer that nobody wants you to know about. They have looked at like, again, killing cancer cells in a lab to see if that will work. They've looked at it to see if it encourages

spermatogenesis, the formation of more sperm. So like as a fertility thing. I'm assuming not. I mean, in all of these studies, they very small studies at large amounts, they say like we saw a moderate effect. Okay. But then at the end of every study like that, if you see like much more research needs to be done, what this means is we think we found something but we're not sure. And you would need to do a lot more studies to know for sure. And now granted,

and you would need to do a lot more studies to know for sure. And now granted, all science starts that way. Sure. All the things that do work, at some point somebody went, we think we might have something. Maybe it works. But they've also looked at like, can it work for memory enhancement? Can it work for protection generally of your nerves,

especially like of your neuronal function and your brain, um, is it good for digestive function? Is it good for losing weight? Is it good for, uh, treating anxiety? Um, all of these things have been investigated. There's, there's small in vitro studies or they've done, you know, just in some sort of animal model, like a mouse or something. And all of them are like, well, we think we found something maybe. But it's probably encouraging. I don't know if I would say broadly encouraging.

All right. I would say that it's possible that it does something, but no one knows, and there's no heart evidence of any of it. And I always, I mean, like the human body is so complex. I find it discouraging that there is this sort of push to find a cure all. Like that, when you start looking at a substance for 35 different complaints, in your mind, you have decided that the substance could cure

all of these different things, treat them or manage them right why Would there be one thing that does all that? Or would there be a grand design? Okay, we'll see then where you've lost me Like that but the human body is infinitely complex and everybody's different and the idea that you've got a substance that if we all just took We'd all be fine. I mean I mean I'd be perfect and cures headaches and hangovers. So you tell me. There are things that can do more than one thing if they have a common root.

But you're looking at a common pathway that causes different effects. And then if you can affect that pathway, you would have different benefits from it, right? Like all of these things I've listed, like blood pressure, asthma, IBS, farting. They're all in different parts of your body. Yeah, memory, killing a bacteria. Like these are all different mechanisms and pathways. And so the idea that there is any substance that exists on planet Earth, or I don't know, in outer space, that would cure all those things at once. It's wild to me that it's thought, I don't know. Yeah, no, I know what you mean. The downside, in addition to the fact that when you use things like this that are unproven

as medicine, you may neglect actual medical treatments, which would put you at risk, right? Like in the asthma example. The other thing is that a lot of these substances if they are active in the human body, they're active in the human body. So they might do good things, but they might also have side effects. And that's true, no matter how natural something

is touted as being, if it works, it's doing something. This can interact with things like blood thinners. So serious stuff. Yes, and so if you are on blood thinners, it's not something that you should play around with. You should talk to your medical provider before you take any supplement. But specifically if you're on other medications,

you need to ask, will this interact with those other medications? Do you have those effects using its cooking aspects or cooking method? I don't think it, I think similar to a lot of substances that can, that can do these things. If you're using them in like the general amounts we would in cooking, no, but if you're taking extra amounts as a supplement. Yeah, okay. So it can interact with blood thinners. It can cause something called methemoglobinemia, which basically, you know that the, the hemoglobin is the oxygen carrying part

of your red blood cells. Yes. The iron in the hemoglobin converts from one form to another form, ferrous to ferric. The important thing is it affects your oxygen carrying capability. Oh, okay. This is a big deal.

Yeah, we got it. This is very bad. We love that stuff. Yeah, this is very bad. So there are side effects that can be serious and then it can just cause things like lip swelling and burping. It can cause you to fart. I know it's used to cure for it, but it can also make you fart.

It can cause diarrhea headaches. All kinds of other things, especially if taken in large amounts. At this point, a lot of people like it for cooking. Sure. It is a very popular spice. We cannot evade you to keep the flavor of Aspatita here on the show. And I have not, and there is no evidence that if you're using it in that capacity, it would be dangerous.

But I think that I have not seen any compelling, I still can't find it. I assume that since it uses supplement, there's like capsules of it out compelling. I still can't find it. I assumed that since it's used as supplement, there's like capsules of it out there somewhere. I can't find any. Maybe you just can't see some of the chunks of resin. It's all, yeah, it's all either in resin or like the powder. Nope, here's the capsules. Nah, I knew somebody had them.

Walmart, you can get them a Walmart. Great. Well, heck, yeah, I knew they were out there somewhere. But yeah, right now, there are no studies that are compelling that it has any medical benefits. There are risks to taking it as a supplement. I'm eager to try it. Yeah.

As a spice. Let's see. Yeah. Maybe it'll be our new favorite thing. I don't know. I don't know. And maybe it'll fix a lot of problems for us physically speaking. Maybe it'll turn, turn this thing around. I don't, I don't have any compelling evidence.

That it doesn't. I mean, all I'm saying Sydney is it's really important that we keep an open mind, an open heart, an open wallet to be able to buy different things to try them. I don't, I will say that in the, we, we have talked about a lot of like snake oil on this show. And in the like grand scheme of bad actors, this would not be high on my list. It looks like most people use it for cooking. And similar to the way I think most people interact with garlic. I love garlic. I know there's some studies that suggested maybe it could do some things, but you'd have to take a ton of it and like there are other

things that do that too. But I love garlic and I'll eat garlic. And sometimes when I eat garlic, I think I was so healthy. I ate garlic. And because I love garlic, and I think that this was probably a very similar idea. Like, don't buy the capsules, just eat it if you like it. Yeah. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. It's called Saul Bones. We've been doing it for a Sydney alluded a decade now.

We got a check and see where our tenure anniversary is. It definitely was in 2013, but I don't know when we exactly started. I was pregnant with Charlie, I believe. Okay. Okay. Well, I can't be right. Is that right? Maybe I'm wrong. Well, the most at the end of 2013. No, it was June 21st. Well, it wasn't pregnant. You were not pregnant. No. No. We did an interview for the paper about it when I was pregnant.

Oh, maybe that's what I'm thinking of. Yeah, okay. Yeah. June 21st, 2013. So we're coming up on the inspirational 10-year anniversary of this podcast. Thanks to the taxpayers. She used their song Medicines as the intro and outro of our program. Thanks to you for listening. That's going to do it for us for this week. Until the intro and outro of our program. Thanks to you.

For listening, that's going to do it for us for this week. Until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfun.org Comedy and Culture Artist Oat? Audience supported