Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Methalyne Blue

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Often pseudo-scientific medicine is brought to Dr. Sydnee by friends and family. But this time, she encountered methalyne blue in the wild! Methalyne blue is currently being touted as a cancer treatment, which is . . . not based on evidence. But Dr. Sydnee talks about the history of this colorful substance and what it can be actually used for.Sawbones audience feedback survey: https://forms.gle/kLXiFU8iRzAazPyn9Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/Border Angels: https://www.borderangels.org/

Sawbones 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. All right. Sorry is about some books.

One, two, one, two, three, four. Two, three, three, we came across a pharmacy with its windows blasted out. Pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around. The medicines, the medicines, the Escalent McCormack. For the mouth Hello everybody and welcome to Sawbones Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine I'm your co-host Justin McElroy

And I'm Sidney McElroy Let's address the elephant in the room to say Because I can't pretend that we're not on the same side At the table right now That's true We're on the same, we're not facing each other directly I have to angle my body to see you In theater, of course we know

This is three-quarter I'm cheating out Cheating out I'm cheating out cheating out. Yeah, but we're all sitting on the same side of the table. I don't think it's going to change the energy that much. At least I hope it's not.

I was hoping it would bring more of a live show energy because we do this in a live show. Yes, that's true. And so, although generally that is accompanied by people cheering for us more loudly for me. I would just like to know usually more loudly for me. So I am missing that. Yes, I do. That's pretty good. That's pretty good.

We'll work on it. You can build up to. Can you get me, can you get me a machine? Aren't there machines that do that? A pause machines? Mm-hmm. They have actually condensed a lot of those just onto phones. It's just fun.

They're just buttons. It's just buttons. It's all on phone. You have a whole machine for white noise. I don't know why you wouldn't get a whole machine for applause. That's true. Me specifically, I think, could use that in my day-to-day life. I think you would make more use of that than a white noise machine.

I mean, around the house, I would love a little bit of extra support. board. I don't feel like I'm getting a lot of, you know, that reinforcement from you and the girls sometimes and the cats. I don't feel like me or the cats are getting enough positive reinforcement. Justin, I'm excited to talk about our topic this week because I encountered it in the wild. And so sometimes something that's sort of pseudo-scientific or not necessarily based in good science, not necessarily evidence-based, will pop into my own Facebook feed through people that I know. Sydney, you got to understand.

Sydney is keeping the AI guessing. Sydney is keeping the algorithm guessing because they cannot get a beat on this lady. Because as much as she looks into pseudoscientific nonsense, she's also looking into like real pills and stuff. Real pills and stuff. I don't know about that. That's the website we use. That's what they tell you when you start medical school. They're like, you don't need to learn anything here.

Just go to real pills and stuff. dot net just because i'm a patient doesn't mean i should be patronized sidney i'm sorry i'm sorry what are you talking about this week what did you what did you what did you encounter in the wild in the wild i encountered methylene blue uh being used for in the the post that i saw being suggested as a possible cancer treatment yes yes i was outraged i responded i normally i am that person, I responded. I was outraged and I thought, why would a medical professional be recommending methylene blue in this way? What is, where did this even come from? And then we got an email from Priya, thank you, Priya, who is also a fourth year medical student. So good luck. Good luck in

your fourth year. You get lots of vacation that year. Nice. Yeah. I mean, you're supposed to because you've got to go interview and stuff. So it's a good year. You should choose family medicine. I'm not biased, you should because everyone should. And also, she is biased. Yeah, I am. It's great. You need to do everything. Anyway, but Priya also asked about methylene blue as a new sort of wellness trend.

And so then it clicked. Okay, this isn't just this one person that I happen to know on Facebook touting methylene blue. This is part of a larger fad. New cool thing. So what is methylene blue? Why are we talking about it in medical circles? What are the legitimate medical uses?

and where do things get a little wonky? You're asking me that, and it's sitting in a real panic through my body, Sid, because I had not heard of this stuff until about two minutes ago. So I don't know. I hope you were not relying on me for this. I have it all. I know it all. Okay.

Normally over that side of the table, I'm able to read you a little bit better, but like you're in my perif now, and I don't know. I'm flying blind. So tell me about it, Justin. So if you had to guess, wait, if you had to guess what methylene blue was, what would you guess it is? The truth of the matter is, I was thinking, I figured it was this stuff from Breaking Bad. I figured it was this stuff from Breaking Bad.

You thought it was meth? He made blue meth, notably. In Breaking Bad, he made blue meth. So, like, I used my context clues. I don't know. Let me ask you a quick question about Breaking Bad. Did he make meth that was just blue, or did he color his meth blue so you would know it was his meth? Oh, no, no, no.

Like as a hallmark of his meth. Walter White stuff was just, it was just blue, but it was the best stuff. Like he wouldn't use artificial dyes. Later on, I think some of the other guys in the drug fight, they started dying. There's blue to kind of like, to compete with Heisenberg. To some real world context, often. Mine was, sorry, mine was from Breaking Bad. So it was.

So not real world. That is a thoroughly research. That's a television show. In our community, thoroughly recent. In our community, the color of a certain product usually has nothing to do with what's in it. It's the person who's selling it might add colorant so that you know like this is so and so stuff. And so sometimes we will say like, oh, watch out for the pink stuff. But it's not because there's something about it that makes it pink. It's that we know right now that wherever that's coming from has bad stuff. So stay away from the pink stuff. But do. Try the gray stuff. It's delicious. Don't believe me. But it can change. More recently, it was the purple stuff. So you never know. Yeah. So the color is. Purple stuff. I hate when my mom gets purple stuff and I just want Sunny D. You know?

Do you have any other color plus stuff? Because I would like to see how many others I can do. Well, there was the yellow stuff for a while. But most recently, it's been pink and purple. I don't know. I don't have anything for those. Anyway. So as you, I thought you might guess, methylene blue is. a die because it's got blue in the name. Okay. So it sounds like a dye. Yeah. Do you know why?

Because it is. It was a dye first. That's cool. It died things. It was synthesized. Blue Cantrell also has blue in her name. And she's not a color, notably. She is a singer.

So I don't know what your point is. Okay. Well, it was a die. It is a die. But initially, that's all it was. Synthesized in 1876 by German chemist Heinrich Kero. It was very pretty blue. It was used in textiles.

We used to get so wild. We used to be so wild about, I know blue and purple especially. We're wild about this stuff because we don't get a lot of blue and purple in nature. And we've done some wild stuff to get blues and purples over the years. And we made this synthetic dye and we were all very excited. And the crossover point, because then how did we end up using a dye as a legitimate medication? Because it is. I mean, that's the thing. There are things we legitimately use methylene blue for. How did that happen? Okay. The crossover is probably, the advent of staining techniques in the laboratory. So we realized as we developed microscopy, so we can use a microscope to look at small things. Just getting the small thing onto a slide, that's not always enough because we're looking for certain structures and maybe we need to highlight different pieces.

And so we started playing around with dyes to stain different parts of the specimen so that we could look at specific structures or features or just look at like a bacterial pathogen and not the tissue it was invading, that kind of thing. Does that make sense? Yeah. So we started putting stains and dyes on tissues and organisms in a laboratory setting because of that. Hmm.

And we noticed in the process of doing that that something was out? Well, we did because as we started using them to highlight specific tissues or pathogens, we noticed that they would selectively bind sometimes to just the problem. pathogen. And so that was intriguing because if this is a substance that I can put in a human body and it's only going to attach itself to the invading organism, what does it do to the invading organism? You know, I'm looking under a microscope and maybe everything's already dead, but if I put it in a human body, will it kill the organism and leave the human body alone? Because then all of a sudden we got a medicine, right? Nope. Medicine. Well, maybe. Maybe we got a medicine.

And it's great because then we're one, we're going to turn it blue. and two, we're going to kill it. Yeah. Which is the goal. Yeah. So that's probably the crossover point. And there was like a lot of interest at that time period when we're moving into like the late 1800s in these stains and dyes, these synthetic substances, using them as some sort of treatment for something. So this and that is probably why it came to be.

We use them to stain things. Let's put them in. Right. Let's put them in living humans. And this was and it probably started with Coke of posturing. Folk-Postulate fame, Coke's postulates we've talked about on the show before. Paul Ehrlich was really the one that first started experimenting with different dyes and like how would they attack different microorganisms and we know, he knew you'll see these really pretty cross-sections. If you ever look up like methylene dye as a stain, they would do like cross-sections of like- If I, sorry, say again.

If you ever look up methylene blue as like a stain, like a laboratory stain or a tissue stain, you'll see these beautiful cross-sections. of like the human brain with specific pieces of it dyed blue. Okay, cool. If that kind of thing you find beautiful. Yeah, of course. I feel like if I was the kind of person that finds that beautiful, I probably already would have searched for images of methylene blue, but I don't know, maybe I just missed out.

Well, I did, do you want me to, I mean, I have, they're saved. I could pull them. I don't have them pulled up, but I could. Let's save it, and I'll put it on the big screen upstairs, and we can really get into the details and stuff, because I got a lot more pixels up there. We can really get into it. He noticed that you could do this even in, like, living human tissues.

And so the thought was like, ooh, okay, so this is, you know, this is safe, for the most part, inert. I mean, it's not, we'll get into that. It's not completely without risk. But, like, it's a safer substance to put in a human body. And it binds specifically, we figured out to the parasite that causes malaria. And so as early as 1891, we started proposing that maybe, maybe, maybe, Methylene Blue could be used to treat malaria, because when we put it in a human body, it attaches itself to the malaria parasite, the plasmodium, but it doesn't harm human tissues.

So great. So there were some studies done in the late 1800s to look specifically at, hey, could we, instead of the other medications we have for malaria, would this be a safer, less side-effect-y kind of route, right? And basically what they found is it's not as good. Does it work? Yeah, maybe a little. It's kind of like...

It's pretty. It's pretty. It's pretty. And it kind of works. But it's not... So a lot of times if we're trying to... A pretty and kind of works is better than crystals. That's only half of that.

I mean, honestly, like, I think this lesson and the fact that they latched on to this so quickly. I mean, we're talking again, we're still developing how we go about, you know, making therapeutics. And the idea of a synthetic drug is still pretty new, something that you just made in a lab and then put in a human. That's still, I mean, this is probably the first one. And it's blue, which we still are using for medicines to communicate that they're futuristic. Like, I still think if you see like a little blue vial in a movie, it's like, oh, that's, don't drop that, because we're all dead. No, drop that. Exactly, exactly.

And so they, but they looked at this and they did the studies and they compared it to quinine, which was the treatment of the time. That was what most people would have received for malaria. And what they found is that it was not as good. It was, what you're looking for is what it called non-inferior. You're testing a new drug. Is it not inferior to the existing drug? And that's the study you want to do. And quinine is naturally occurring, right?

Or are we refining that? Well, no, we got it out of the bark of the synchona tree. So, yeah, it was, yeah. But we, what we found is that methylene blue was not as effective. And so it did not supplant quinine. as the primary treatment. And I think that that, the fact that that was latched on to so quickly is informative because I find stuff today that people will be like, hey, if you take, you know, red rice yeast

is a great example. People will say you should take that instead of a statin medication to lower your cholesterol. Well, it doesn't work as well. And if you take really high doses of it, it can have the same side effects as statins do. so it doesn't the fact that it's natural doesn't help does that make sense that's a bias right it's a bias to think that something is is natural and thereby it is more effective so in this case they did the study and they found it doesn't work better that's and this also wasn't natural so maybe that was the bias too also it can kind of turn things blue so like your pee was blue if you took it sometimes the whites of

your eyes the sclera would turn blue that okay pee is blue Blue when you took it is huge. For me, I think that would be so exciting. You know how excited I get about asparagus and what a rewarding system that is for me. That's true. That's true. Kind of rewarded you. Not a reward necessarily, but like I noticed.

I see you. You know what I mean? Like it makes me feel like my body sees what I'm doing for it. And the fact that it's like I could make my pee blue, I feel like that would be my body saying like, thank you for this medicine. It's working as intended. I think, I think actually what you're hitting on is why, as we get to the end. of the episode, you're going to see a resurgence in methylene blue. I do think people want to see the effect it's having. That's right. It's weird that we haven't had it. We should

look into asparagus because I do wonder if people have harnessed the power of asparagus in a refined form where you take these pills and all of a sudden your urine is just like off the chart stinky. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. The impact. I was going to say you're the only person I know personally who wants to eat something to make their pee stinky, but Cooper, our daughter, has said the exact same thing. She also told us that she wanted buttered chicken this morning to load up on fart power, which we did provide to her and her sister, who are both of them are going to be on a bus to that.

Listen, I would rather eat butter chicken than eggs and bacon, so. It's like, I don't understand butter chicken at 6.45 a.m. though, I, like, legitimately don't get, it sends me for a loop. I feel like I'm in a David Lynch movie every time. I open a container. I'm like, okay, sure. I love butter chicken. I love chicken, I love chicken myself.

It is like, it would be like, it would be like waking up at 4 a.m. And putting on a tuxedo and going into a swimming pool. It's madness. There's in there with their paper towels as napkins tucked into their shirt so they don't get butter chicken on their school clothes. It's like, what? So cute.

Anyway. Anyway, so. You don't care about our kids. they do they do so in 1932 we found some more uses so now that we knew methylene blue could do something then it you know kind of opens the door for what else could we do in the human body

with methylene blue and I mean that's true for a lot of things if we find something that kills germs and doesn't kill humans we're gonna keep playing with it and see what else it does get a shot right so we found Dr. Matilda Brooks a cellular biologist at UC Berkeley

in 1932, found some other uses for methylene blue. I do want to note, I think it's really interesting. I was reading about Dr. Brooks. Her and her husband were hired at UC Berkeley at the same time to both do research together in the same lab. So they were researching together. She was technically working as a research assistant to him because they had an anti-nepotism policy.

Oh. So they couldn't both. Basically, she didn't get paid. she wouldn't get paid for her work even after he passed away she couldn't be paid for the work she was doing researching in the lab but she continued to do her research and work in the lab eventually they gave her sorry guys it sounds like another bad one for us we did it again guys damn it's just it's wild i mean they wouldn't they wouldn't pay she was working they wouldn't pay her we gotta stop with this stuff history come on she was also a celli

biologist. Like she had the credentials who worked there in the lab. After he passed away and then of course she couldn't live off of his salary. I mean, you know, the rationale at the time would have been like, well, he's getting paid. What do you need money for a lady? Probably said like that. This is my favorite. Hey, little lady. Hey, little lady.

What do you need money for? Your husband's got money. I can't do that character because I think it will make you mad at me even though it's just a fun character. She was given a $500 a year stipend moving forward. Basically like I mean, I suppose you still have to eat

or whatever they would not reimburse her for travel or expenses associated with doing her job and presenting her research and findings so a lot of it she did on either her own dime or she would write and get her own grants to

continue her research oh man I don't know Sid that's pretty rough guys man history guys again dang it it is not I can really use a W history, guys. Come on. No, but listen, this is the best we can do.

I cannot go back in time and give Dr. Brooks a fair salary, right? I can't do that. I don't have a time machine because we'd know. We would know if time travel exists. Because they won't pay you to be my co-researcher in my time machine project. I'm doing it all of my own. This is where we reveal that I don't get paid for any of this. I'm Justin's assistant.

We have an anti-nepotism policy here. Actually, I'm the only one in the matter. family organization that does get paid literally no one else can get paid everybody else is a enthusiastic volunteer learning my trade that's not true i don't want you to think that's true every night when we go to bed city puts her head on her shoulder on my shoulder she says i've learned so much for you today thank you so much for the podcast training no i don't have a trade so dr brooks propose that because methylene oh no i didn't get to finish I thought. I'm so sorry. So we cannot go back in time and pay her a fair wage. However,

yeah, we can recognize her on this podcast. It is not the same. It is not fair. It is all I have to offer though. It's the only thing I can do, which is to recognize her contributions and her hard work and say her name. It is the only thing I can do so I can do that. And I will say it is not as good as that recognition of the time. It is better. All they had back then were or newspapers, dusty old newspapers. This is electronic and literally six billion people can get at it. Like, it's better. This credit is eternal, digital, eternal.

And I think it's actually better than getting in some weird old newspaper at the time. Yes, I do think the attention is better. I would say that if I were to pull out my Ouija board and ask Dr. Brooks, she would prefer a paycheck. Can I ask, do you want a Ouija board or do you? want a time machine because it seems redundant to have your Ouija board if you, the time machine is already functional. I think, I think we've got to explore all avenues in science. Let's try everything.

So anyway, she proposed, methylene blue is what we call a redox dye. What that means is that in an oxidized state, it is blue, and then when it is reduced, it turns colorless. That, those are helpful when we are doing experiments in a lab, chemical reaction. actions in a lab to see what happened. Does that make sense? Like, if you put it in there and it changes color, you know what just happened. Yeah. And if it doesn't, you know it didn't happen. Okay. So it was already being used in this way. What that means is that it can gain and lose electrons. That's key to understanding what she was doing moving forward. This compound can take an electron on

or give an electron away. Okay. Okay. Cyanide. The poison. The apple scenes. It's in that. But this, but we're not talking about apples. We're talking about cyanide. Just some trivia. I want to go from Zolpins. From a very simplified perspective, the way it works, you know what mitochondria are? The generators of the cell, powerhouse. Powerhouse of the cell. Okay.

So cyanide, very simply, turns off the ability of mitochondria to make ATP, which is the, that's the stuff that makes things go. It's like the energy, right? It turns that off, and eventually it will starve yourselves of oxygen and you'll die. That's how cyanide works. What she discovered is that methylene blue can bypass what cyanide is blocking the point in the chain that cyanide creates a block. Methylene blue can get around that block. Whoa, anti-sionide pills? Yes, it can be a treatment for cyanide poisoning.

This is going to go in my James Bond novel, unlicensed James Bond novel. Think about it. It's like, they get him with cyanide, and he's like, actually, I have this blue cufflink. And he's like, oh, he drinks his blue cuffling. he's fine. I mean, that, yes. I mean, because what it goes around the blockade. That wasn't a joke. That was just sick. I mean, I don't know. It would be. Probably it. Somewhere someone has put this in a spy thing. Everything old is new again. That's not going to keep me from doing it. So she spoke, by the way, she spoke of her findings and this proposed mechanism. Like, here's a treatment for cyanide poisoning at the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine in April of 1932. I think it's important to note that in December of that year, Dr. J. C. Geiger a man, had an article published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association,

titled Methylene Blue as antidote for cyanide and carbon monoxide poisoning. Dr. Brooks responded with a letter to the editor to JAMA, noting that when Dr. Geiger wrote this article, he talked about how he had heard from some other people about how maybe this would work. And there was another guy, another scientist who told him about some research. he'd done to suggest this, and this is how he arrived at these conclusions. The other guy that he referenced was at her talk in April of that year, passed this information on to this dude, and then he published all the findings. She was not credited, except for in her letter

to the editor where she said, I'm the one who told him. These moments where you're yelling at men, I think would be so a lot more impactful now that we do have the camera if they were like, you really got to just, like, send him out there to, like, there's just, there's one man here, you know, and he's been getting it for 13 years on Sawbones and what I'm saying is like, let's just send that there.

There's one man here and all the other ones are out there. It just figures like she's not getting paid for her work, right? A $500 year stuyves. She went to this conference to speak and she probably paid for her own transportation, her own hotel. She probably had to pay

for her own like, I mean we didn't have PowerPoint yet. It's like poster board. or whatever You know I'm high on the feeling of us being on the same team right now It's us versus them for a thing She told everybody like

I have some evidence That methylene blue can be an antidote For cyanide poisoning Isn't this exciting And there was a guy in the audience Who was like I'm gonna tell my buddy about this And he went and told his buddy about it

And then his buddy was like I'm gonna publish a whole article About it in JAMA And get all the credit Not now Look who just said it right I guess I guess it takes a good man with a podcast to stop a bad man with a medical journal.

And we'll just freeze it right there. If we could crop, crop on me where it's like, fixed it, you know? That's good. I'm done talking about the injustices to Dr. Brooks for this half of the show. Let's take a break and then I can, we can just talk about medicine. Okay. Let's go the building department. Let's go.

The medicines, the medicines that Eskilet macabre for the mouth. Okay, Sid. Listen, if you want to get fired up at men out there again, I love that because I love this energy of you and me on the same team. But I'm just let me know, Queen, because I'm ready to fight for you. You ready to fight for me? And Dr. Brooks. And Dr. Brooks and all people. Can I say, I will, I did really love the interaction.

Like, he published the article in JAMA. She sent a letter to the editor where she was like, this was my thing. And like, I presented it at this conference. Like, there's a record of me knowing it first. And he did respond immediately below it. There's like author's response because they do that. They have like the people who write who are like, I don't know about this. And then the author gets to be like, well, here's what I was thinking.

And then the next person gets like one more little one. And then the person, then the last person gets one. picture where they're like mm or they just get a meme they get one emoji at the end so the author did respond and said it has come to my attention that she blah blah blah and I would like to give her recognition and I would like to alter my thing to say that she came up with this whatever so he like very quickly was like sorry sorry oops sorry but that's the thing about systemic right is like he probably didn't know and then he gets to be like oh that was my mess up but you don't think about like why did it happen in the first place man it's not an isolated things i don't

listen i don't i'm not going to sit here and say he probably didn't know i don't know 50 50 i'm just saying i'm saying he might have known he might have known and maybe he didn't i bet can i say can i actually he probably did can revise what i said earlier he definitely he definitely knew now that's where i'm at he definitely i will this has you This happens to this day. I'm not going to sit here and put people on blast that, like, are alive and live in our world right now. But, like, this happens to this day. So, yeah.

Anyway. I thought the first half, because at the end of the first half, you're like, medicine. And I, can I say, I'm so relieved to hear that that was wrong and that we're still. Because we have discovered unlocked this property of methylene blue is something that can give and take electrons away. it opened the door for it to be used for other medical conditions. And this is where you get to the primary use of methylene blue in medicine as a legitimate medication that is still indicated and used to this day is for a condition called met hemoglobinemia. Okay.

This can either be something that you inherit, you know, that you just have, or it can be something that happens to you when you take certain medications. But basically, the iron, you know, there's iron in your hemoglobin. In the heem, there's iron in there. It gets an extra oxygen. and this inhibits its ability to transport oxygen, okay? And the result of this can be some minor symptoms like some headache and dizziness onto shortness of breath.

You can become lacking oxygen like cyanotic turned blue, hypoxic. You can have seizures. You can have abnormal heart rhythm. So it can be very serious. So it's important to address this condition. Methylene Blue, because it can give and take electrons away, is a really helpful medication to give somebody. with met hemoglobinemia.

We also give them oxygen. That's kind of like the standard first thing, like put some oxygen on them to get oxygen in their body. Then you can give methylene blue and it'll help reverse what's going on with the iron and it can turn back into the hemoglobin we know and love that can transport oxygen to your body cells. Good. So, as when I went through medical school and to this day, as far as I know, methylene blue is used in medicine primarily in one way to treat methemoglobinemia. I will say you could use it to reverse as cyanide poisoning. There are other things you can do, but you could do that. You could also, there's been some resurgence in interest of treatment for malaria with methylene

blue as like an adjunct as an added on treatment to other treatments that exist. Yes, there's been, I was reading some really recent research about that. I almost joked earlier that they should have just mixed them up together. And I almost said that, and you would have thought that was so smart if I'd said it, but tag nabbit, okay. I'll just keep, it's a good reminder. I need to just say these thoughts as soon as they come into my head and not second guess myself ever. I just need to get it out there no matter what crosses up there.

The seed of a lot of scientific thought is just stuff like that. What if we mixed it together? I mean, that really is the base, now we don't stop there. Good science never stops there. But some of our brightest scientific minds do. In a sense, some of the biggest scientific minds are the ones that just have the guts to ask the questions and then don't follow up they say like what if we mix them together and then i'm like i will leave you all to it you know what i what if we mix them together and then i just back out of

the rim it depends on what your metric of success is justin because i would say that while our leading scientific minds don't do that there are a lot of influencers and very successful i don't know YouTubers podcasters whatever's yeah who that's exactly what they're doing on the grand spectrum of the human experiment. I'd love to pretend I'm more the former, but let's be honest. So I think it's important to know as we, so they're legitimate medical uses. Methylene Blue is a real medicine, not debating this. There are some side effects and danger, risks to using it. I shouldn't say danger. There are risks. It's any, let's not any medication, right? You go over the risk, the benefits, the alternatives, and the side effects. So because of the

way that methylene blue functions in your body, it can actually interact with certain other meds, specifically antidepressants. So medications that increase your serotonin level by preventing it from being taken back up, selective serotonin reuptic inhibitors, SSRIs, a lot of the most popular antidepressants are those. So a lot of people are on these medications. I'm saying they're very common medications. Methylene blue can interact with those because it also can increase your serotonin levels and you can develop something called serotonin syndrome. So it's not a good idea to take it if you're on other medications without talking to a health care provider. So there are some risks to it. Also, as strange as this sounds, methylene blue can cause methemoglobinemia

in somebody who doesn't have it if taken at the wrong dose and too much and all that kind of stuff, right? And so anyway, there are some risks to it. It is not completely benign. It's not one of those things that it's like, I don't know, just do it if you want to. What's the harm? Right? It's not. There are real harms if you shouldn't be taking it. Back in 2015, there was a study that came out, which looked at methylene blue as a potential treatment for progeria, which is a rapid aging disease? I think it's, I know that it's not technically Jack disease, but I do want to clarify that in the past, I have referred to it as Jack disease to explain what it is.

Yes. But not to make light of it. Right. Exactly. Because Jack disease is not real. And neither is Benjamin Buttonitis. No, Benjamin Button, that is not real. Progeria is real.

Yes. And this is a specific kind of progeria that they were looking at. Basically, the idea is that through certain effects on mitochondria, because we know methylene blue can do that because of the cyanide history, that maybe we would be able to slow the progression of progeria by giving somebody methyling blue. So there was a study published in 2015. It showed that there were some effects on the mitochondria. And these weren't, it was not in people. This was in a lab. So in vitro, not in vivo. that's in life, there was some suggestion like, well, this could be something. Maybe there's something here. We should do some more research on this to see if methylene blue or compounds like it, because there are other things that can give and take electrons away. It's not the only compound. Maybe this could be something in this very specific condition. Maybe, maybe, maybe. And that's all it takes for wellness influencers to run with something. So the next, I think the next step in the story was there's a fitness influencer named Ben Greenfield. And he told his Instagram followers that methylene blue is a potent cognitive enhancer.

And what I think what really, you talked about how you can see the effects of it and that people like that. I think that's exactly why this over other things may be caught on very quickly is because he would give himself methylene blue and it would make his tongue blue. And so he posted a picture of himself with his tongue out, blue. And then encouraged other people to take methylene blue and post pictures of yourself on your methylene blue. So you take it and then you post a cute little picture with your blue tongue, which like you could also just get one of those really great blue raspberry blow pops. Those are great. Yeah. Those are much better than methylene blue.

Yeah. And they'll go full blue, full blue tongue. Full blue. And you got a nice little, and if you got a little piece of bubble going with you to look forward to. But he touted, so you should do this, not just for the cognitive benefits, but it enhances mitochondrial function. So he's, this is sort of, it's based in an idea. It's not true, but like it's, you know what I mean? It is risky.

It's related to the truth. It's truth adjacent. Okay. That it provides neuroprotective effects against brain inflammation, increases memory and cognitive function, enhances the effects of light and oxygen. the effects of light and oxygen therapies, and much more. I feel neutropics that he's referencing here, as I understand it, is the idea that you can add chemicals to make your brain work better, right? There are substances that are going to make your brain work better.

Yeah, it's like a limitless pill. It's like a limitless pill. I think that it is weird to me that more people have not wised up to this. If you look at the vast number of people who believe that they are, into neutropics it is certifiably provable that neutropics do not work look at the people

who say their brains are functioning better on neutropics, okay? And then see if their brains are functioning better. It's not a Venn diagram. It's Mr. Magoo. Okay? Neutropics, be in. The problem is that a lot of rich people say that

and we have this bias in our society to equate the ability to accumulate, wealth with intelligence yes and those there is all over the board all over the board there yeah now you might be wondering where are people getting methylene blue because I've just referenced it's a prescription medication yeah so they don't have the special cufflings I admitted earlier so where are they getting it well it is also used as an antifungal dye that cleans fish tanks so you can buy it to clean your fish tank and then you could take it.

I feel like I would look for more natural alternatives even to clean my fish tank. That doesn't even make me feel good for stove top stuffing to have to deal with methylene blue. Yeah. No, but that's that is where, I mean, that was the idea is like it's really easy to purchase. It's sort of like everybody was going after Ivermectin by like getting it for your horse or whatever and then taking it for yourself. Please don't do that either.

But it's the same idea. Like, we'll just, I mean, we can cheat the system. Buy it to clean your fish tank and then take it in your human body. So anyway, a lot of influencers and people who push pseudo medicine and pseudoscience started following in this, you know, I mean, this is great. Like it's really easy to tell people. It's kind of like we've talked about laxatives, things that make you poop and diuretics, things that make you pee, have always been popular in medicine that isn't really evidence based. And the reason is that if it's working or not, is objective. Did it work?

Well, yeah, I was in the bathroom for an hour, so it worked. Did it do any of the things it was supposed to? I don't know, but I was in the bathroom for an hour, so it did something. Yeah. So I think, like you said, methylene blue, you can see the blue on your tongue. If you take enough, it might turn your pee blue. You could get blue eyes. So, like, you can see that it's working.

And now it's being pushed. There are all kinds of supplements you can buy online with methylene blue in it that are anti-aging, that will increase your energy and stamina or, as I saw on my own personal Facebook feed, another physician saying, if you have nothing else to lose, why not try it in reference to using methylene blue as a treatment for stage four breast cancer? Along with the eye drug, which I think must have been Ivermectin, but I do want to note that one, I think these things take on interest because you can see. them and they're Instagramable and whatever.

Two, for most people taking methylene blue isn't going to harm them. That isn't me saying you should because for some people it can absolutely do harm. But for most people it won't do harm and so you're going to take it and maybe placebo effect, maybe you feel better or whatever, but it's not going to hurt you and so you're going to think it's good, right? So for those reasons it catches on. But then that specific point, if you have nothing else to lose, why not try it, is one of the most dangerous statements a person can make.

If somebody says that to you, a red flag needs to go up in your head about everything else they've told you because we have lots of handrails put on the things we do in medicine. There are tons of checkpoints in our studies, especially when it involves humans, alive human bodies that we're putting substances in, that check us to make sure we are not taking advantage of people who are desperate, of people who know that their condition doesn't have an effective treatment or cure at this point and who will try anything that is exactly why we have guardrails on the science that we do in humans to prevent charlatans from taking advantage of people who are desperate so if somebody says to you go ahead take it you got nothing else to lose that is that no

scientist says that no one who who is operating out of a place of evidence in good faith will say that to you the people online who are selling you supplements they'll say that every day Because all they want to do is sell you a supplement and they don't care what happens to you. All of this is added to the claim that supposedly, earlier this year, there was a picture taken of RFK Jr. on Air Force One about to have a drink and he was adding drops of a blue liquid to his drink. And everybody went wild. RFK likes methylene blue. It must be the real thing. I don't know.

It was meo berry pomegranate, though. I guarantee it. I know that stuff anywhere. Also, predictably, Joe Rogan really loves this stuff. Neutropics. Yeah. So it's just like a lot of the cure-alls. It's easy to get and sell and see that you're, you know, I mean, it's blue so you know you're getting the thing.

You can see that it's happening. At this point, other than it's legitimate evidence-based uses that we have researched and found to be true in medical science that you could be prescribed it or given to it by a health care provider for. other than those things, we have no evidence to suggest that you should just be taking methylene blue, and we definitely have reasons to suggest that it could potentially harm you. So please don't do this. And that's going to do it for us for this week on Sawbones. I want to say thanks to taxpayers for the use of their song, Medicines, is the intro and outro of our program. Thanks to our editor, Rachel, and thanks to you.

Hey, one last quick thing. We do lots of different kinds of episodes of Sawbones, and we, And we have tried lots of different kinds, and we like doing all of them. We're curious sort of what you guys think, the folks out there in the listening world. If you'd like to weigh in, we'd love to hear from you. There's a link in the description of this episode. So if you would go check that link, there's a survey there. If you would click it and take that survey, gosh, I'd sure appreciate it.

Thank you so much. You know what? It's science. You guys like science, right? Think about it. You could be part of a experiment, basically. we really appreciate that is going to do it for us for this week. Until next time, my name is Justin McRoehl.

I'm Sidney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your hand. Maximum Fun. A Worker Own Network. of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.