Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: What Makes Us Human & Proven Natural Remedies

Episode Date: May 15, 2021

We’d probably all like to be more persuasive. And there is one little sentence to tack on to the end of any request that is more likely to get people to do what you want. Listen as I begin this episode by revealing that one simple sentence. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10510974.2012.727941?journalCode=rcst20 Have you ever wondered, what makes you human? What is it about us that separates us from other earthly creatures? It’s a fascinating question that has been tackled by Michael Tomasello, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and author of a new book called Becoming Human (https://amzn.to/2I0HHdn). What is so interesting is how we wouldn’t be so human without our interaction with other humans. While we may like to think of ourselves as superior to other animals – it may be more about how we different rather than how we are better. Do you use mouthwash on a regular basis? Did you know the American Dental Association doesn’t recommend that? I’ll explain why killing those bad breath germs in your mouth could have some serious negative consequences. https://www.medicaldaily.com/antiseptic-mouthwash-raises-heart-attack-risk-blood-pressure-chlorhexidine-kills-good-bacteria-helps A lot of people swear by herbal remedies. A lot of other people prefer conventional medicine. Do herbal remedies actually work? And if so, which ones? Tieraona Low Dog, M.D. is a proponent of natural and herbal remedies and she wrote the forward to the new book, Nature’s Best Remedies (https://amzn.to/2tguq66) from National Geographic. She joins me to discuss the science behind some popular herbal remedies and offers help sorting out what works and what does not. PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Backcountry.com is the BEST place for outdoor gear and apparel. Go to https://backcountry.com/sysk and use promo code SYSK to get 15% off your first full price purchase! Go Daddy lets you create your website or store for FREE right now at https://godaddy.com Go to https://RockAuto.com right now and see all the parts available for your car or truck. Write SOMETHING in their “How did you hear about us?” box so they know we sent you! Discover matches all the cash back you earn on your credit card at the end of your first year automatically and is accepted at 99% of places in the U.S. that take credit cards! Learn more at https://discover.com/yes Over the last 6 years, donations made at Walgreens in support of Red Nose Day have helped positively impact over 25 million kids. You can join in helping to change the lives of kids facing poverty. To help Walgreens support even more kids, donate today at checkout or at https://Walgreens.com/RedNoseDay. https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations.

You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Today on Something You Should Know, how to be more persuasive by using one single sentence. Then, a fascinating look at all the things that make you human, including... The way that humans cooperate with one another. If we took a normal child from birth and magically kept them alive in some way on a desert island and they grew up all by themselves, they wouldn't

invent a language on their own, they certainly wouldn't invent mathematics or build buildings or computers and nothing like that. Then if you regularly use mouthwash, you may want to rethink that practice. And natural herbal remedies, do they work? Are they the future of medicine? We're kind of in a bit of trouble when it comes to dealing with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain. The answer cannot just be more pharmaceuticals. It can't be. Too many of the drugs have too many side effects. All this today on Something You Should Know.

People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science,

tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person

Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. How persuasive a person would you say you are? Are you good at getting other people to do what you want? Well, if you'd like to be a little better at it, the next time you really need someone to say yes,

you might want to try the only if you want to trick. A recent study on persuasion techniques suggested that adding that simple phrase or one like it can double your chances of success. The best approach is to keep your request short and sweet. Be direct and sincere and then follow the request with a phrase like, but of course you're free to say no or only if you want to. Reminding the other person that they're in control softens the favor and makes it harder to say no. The tone you use is important too. Even the slightest hint of insincerity or sarcasm can be perceived as passive-aggressive and will likely backfire. But just think, if you can double your chances, it's certainly worth a try.

And that is something you should know. We humans, we humans have it pretty good. We're on top of the food chain. We have those opposable thumbs, which is great. We're reasonably smart. We can figure things out. But are those the things that make us human? Are those the things that separate us from other creatures on the earth? What really makes humans human? It's a fascinating question that turns out to require quite a bit of research and discovery to get to the answer. Fortunately, it's been tackled by Michael Tomasello. Michael is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.

In 2017, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. And he's the author of a new book called Becoming Human. Hi, Michael. Welcome. Hi, Michael. I'm happy to be here. So before we dig down into the details of humanness, if that's a word, in a nutshell, in a big sweeping generalization, what is it that makes humans human?

One of the things that really struck home with us was the way that humans cooperate with one another. Now, I know that in today's world, people would say, gosh, humans aren't cooperative. We're fighting with one another all the time and cheating one another all the time. But I always say you have to look at the right baseline compared to chimpanzees. We're super cooperative. And most of the nasty things we do are to people in outgroups or people that we are competing with over resources or something. So generally speaking, you know, in a community of friends and family and stuff, we're incredibly cooperative. And a lot of the most impressive products of human cultures are collaborative products. So complex technologies like computers or whatever are the product of many people working together over many years.

And complex social institutions like governments or universities or something are, again, collective products of a group of people over time. So it's not so much that we're individually intelligent, but it's that we're able to sort of put our heads together and pool our cognitive resources to do things that no one individual could do on their own. Really? Well, that's interesting that you say that. It's not that we're individually so smart as we are collectively. That's what makes us human, is that we collaborate and collectively, because I think we like to think that as individuals, we're pretty smart. I like to use the example of a child on a desert island. If we took a normal child from birth and magically kept them alive in some way on a desert island. And they grew up all by themselves.

They wouldn't invent a language on their own. They certainly wouldn't invent mathematics or build buildings or computers and nothing like that. So as an adult, they would be very similar to great apes. They might be a little bit different, but not so different. So what they're born with is this ability to tune into others, to collaborate with others, communicate with others, learn from others in special ways. They're born to be members of a culture. But do we know why we do it, but other animals that live in communities don't? It's a combination of the fact that our nearest relatives, we share a common ancestor

with chimpanzees, and they are extremely socially clever in competition. So we have studies showing that they know when others see things, they know when others know things, when they're competing with them, they can use that information to their advantage. But they're using their smarts about others' minds. They're doing mind reading, if you will, to compete with them, to outsmart them. And then somewhere in human evolution, humans took those social smarts and started channeling them in a cooperative direction. So ants and termites and bees are very cooperative, but they don't, they didn't start out with special social intelligence. We started out from our primate

heritage with special social intelligence, and then we channeled it in a cooperative direction. Do we do that? Do we cooperate because we cognitively think it through and go, well, you know, this will get done a lot better if we cooperate, or is this built into us? This collaboration thing is just what we do. Well, that's one of the things that, one of the advantages of working with children is children, like a one-year-old, 18-month-old, is certainly not strategically thinking it'll go better if I cooperate. They just do it and much more enthusiastically than chimps do. So chimps will sometimes cooperate. I'd say the chimps are more like what you're saying strategically. The chimps are seeing that they can't get it by themselves and they kind of use the other guy,

we call it a social tool. They use him as like a social tool to help them get something, like if it requires two of them to pull something in to get food, for example. But the kids, it doesn't matter whether they could do it just as well by themselves or whatever. They just like to cooperate. We had one very simple experiment where they had the choice to either pull in some food by themselves or pull in some food cooperatively with others. And the chimps preferred to do it by themselves, and the kids preferred to cooperate. Why is this important? Why are we talking about this? Because we want to know what makes us human. And this is a question that has been part of the Western intellectual tradition

from the time of Aristotle. Aristotle says humans are the only rational animal. Descartes says we're the only animal with free will. And they're saying these things in a very general way without any real data. And so we really want to know what is it about humans that has led us to be able to dominate the world the way we have to the point that we can probably destroy it if we feel like it. To basically wipe out all the other large mammals, except for the ones we've decided it's in our interest to protect. And we are a weird species. One of the interesting things from listening to you talk about the difference between humans and other creatures is, as you say, we tend to cooperate, but we can very deliberately decide not to cooperate. Where it doesn't seem that, say, bees and ants, I mean, they're seemingly all cooperating with each other. They don't hold grudges or get mad. So humans have the ability and the tendency to cooperate, but we also have the ability to say, no, I'm not going to cooperate.

From a cooperation, straight cooperation point of view, the biggest cooperators might be ants and bees and termites, who are so-called eusocial species, highly cooperative. But they're not so cognitively sophisticated. They're sort of, you know, hardwired for doing what they do and they do it in a cooperative fashion, but they're not inventing new things and communicating with a symbol system and so forth and so on. So we combine great sort of intellectual skills with cooperation in a unique way. One thing that, just from my observation, is a difference between humans and a lot of other creatures is we spend a lot of time just in leisure.

We're not doing anything. We're not being so human, which maybe is part what makes us human, whereas other creatures seem to be spending a lot of time doing whatever it is, bees and ants and birds that they do, that there isn't a lot of time just having fun. Why do we do that? We sort of solve the food problem. And most animals spend most of their day gathering food. I watch chimpanzees in the wild for not a long time. I'm not a field worker, but for a few weeks. And, you know, they wake up.

They go forage for food. They eat some. They take a nap. They get up. They go looking more for food. They find some more. They take a nap. They go looking more for food.

Their day is structured around finding food. And it's an immediate problem. You know, after a few hours, you're hungry again, you got to go hunt again. And we sort of have our refrigerators stacked full and just a trip to the market. We can restack them whenever we want. And we have all this extra time. There's a famous book called Leisure, The Basis of Culture. So we build the Notre Dame Cathedral and we do all these other things because we can and because we have all this extra time and energy. And other species haven't got it quite licked like we have. It does seem that at the heart of a lot of what makes us human,

a lot of the things that we have accomplished and a lot of the momentum of the human race is based in curiosity, that humans are extremely curious, but I guess other creatures are curious too, but maybe in a different way. Chimpanzees are pretty curious creatures. So that's a curiosity that may be not just uniquely human, but the human version is channeled in special ways. I mean, if you take science, science is completely collaborative activity. Nobody does science all by themselves. They are building on the shoulders of giants as they take on the results of previous scientists, and they typically are doing it in teams and figuring things out together and so forth. And so we do it because we can and because we're driven to find out how things work. And there are various reasons for, you know, a lot of the other cultural things we do, art and whatnot.

Michael Tomasello is my guest. He's a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and author of the book, Becoming Human. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell

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So, Michael, is our human ability to learn really different than other animals? Or do we all learn the same thing, or do they not? How does that work? Many animals learn, and many of them learn very well. If you take squirrels hiding nuts and coming back to find them later, they're better at it than we are, as are some birds. So it's not that we're just better learners, but what we are especially good at is social learning. And so we see somebody else do something and we figure out from just watching without having to trial, no trial and error,

just figured out by watching. We are especially good at that. We have a lot of experiments on that. So that's one part of social learning. And a second equally important part is we humans teach one another. And teaching has some special qualities. And I believe teaching is unique to humans. There are a couple of very small examples here and there scattered around in the animal literature that are debatable. But humans are the only ones that incorporate teaching in a large scale on an everyday basis. It's culturally universal in one form or another. In some cultures, it's less verbal and explicit and formal, but there's teaching. And teaching is important because the adult makes sure that the child learns it. And so in culture where you have these skills you have to learn, it's very important that we do that. And there are a lot of interesting studies showing that when we teach kids things, we're quite often teaching them not just about specific items, but about general principles. So we say, you know, snakes are dangerous. We say that in a general way, not just the snake in front of us, but I'm teaching you about the world in general.

And so a lot of teaching is about those kind of general things. And that is unique in the animal kingdom. So our learning is adapted for being cultural beings where we have to learn from those around us or we won't be viable, and so that we learn in special ways from others. That's the main difference. Well, it's interesting that you say that because, you know, I think when I watch like National Geographic films of animals in the wild, you see the mother teaching the child, baboon or whatever it is, how to do something. When you see National Geographic, you see a chimp next to a mom, and the soundtrack, the narrator says, oh, the mom is teaching the child something, but that's not what's going on, I'm sorry. And what's going on? The kid is learning individually. The mom is doing it on her own, and the child is watching

and learning some things, but the mom is not teaching. When I say not, I'm sort of trying to summarize the research. We have no evidence that they actively teach one another, and any species really. Again, there are a couple of small examples, and certainly not other primates. We don't have any good examples of active teaching or instruction. But if you're watching your mom do something, isn't she teaching you just by doing? No, because teaching requires the mom to have a goal or the intention to teach you. And that means that if you're not learning, she, you know, pokes you and says, pay attention. And if you're still struggling, she keeps doing it and teaching until you get it. And then when you get it, she quits.

Or when you get it, she, you know, ratchets up and shows you a more complex version. But if the teacher doesn't have a goal of teaching, then it's really all on the learner to just learn by watching, and that can be observational learning, but teaching requires the teacher to make sure that you learn, and that's what we have with human adults, make sure that children learn things and they do whatever they need to do to make that happen. So when the dust all settles from this, after you've done all this research and you've mentioned several really interesting things about why we are the way we are, but to state that humans are human and therefore unlike other creatures is to state the obvious. So what's the big takeaway from all of this?

The big takeaway is that we tend to think that we are smarter than other animals because we have all these things like buildings and computers and language and math and science and all of that. And we tend to think, oh, it's because we have big brains and we're smarter. And that's not false, but it's really not capturing the story in the right way. The right way is that we have learned to put our heads together. But do we know why we do it but other animals that live in communities don't? We started out from our primate heritage with special social intelligence, and then we channeled it in a cooperative direction. So it's the combination of those that did it. As I say, the child on a desert

island is not going to end up that different from other apes. What we've evolved is the tendency to plug in to the culture around us and to thereby, you know, sort of lift ourselves up by our cultural bootstraps, if that's a metaphor that makes any sense. Well, it's interesting to me to listen to you talk, because from what you're saying, humans have been collaborating because it has served our purposes. We've needed to collaborate to collectively find food and to keep the enemy away and all of that, but we don't need to do that anymore. So it's almost as if some of this is maladaptive, that not only are we in many ways not collaborating,

but we're competing and we're comparing ourselves to the Joneses, and we're not collaborating as much as we're competing. Well, so the fall from grace happens with agriculture and cities. So when most of humans' evolutionary history, 99% were hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherers are very cooperative groups. It's like one big family. And they're mistrustful of other groups. That's part of our in-group, out-group psychology.

The cooperation is within the group. But then when we get agriculture and we settle down, then we start, we spend months growing the food. We have to defend it from other people. We have to, we store up extra food. We get capital. We've got private property that we have to protect. And I agree. It's possible that our adaptations for small group cooperation that we see so clearly in human children as compared to chimpanzees, that in our now modern complicated adult societies, those cooperative skills won't scale up all the way. And it's an open question. Are we going to blow ourselves up or are we going to burn up the planet or whatever?

I think it's still an open question. Yeah, but with our human cognitive ability and maybe our desire for self-preservation, one would like to think that we will figure out a way to prevent ourselves from blowing ourselves up. But I think people have a belief, an understanding that because we are who we are, because we're human, because we sit on top of the food chain, that we, by definition, must be smarter than all the other creatures on Earth. Do you think that's a fair assumption for people to make? No, that's not really it. We've evolved a special way we are, and there are probably some viruses. There's probably some probability that some viruses will wipe us out before we do anything else. So we each have evolved to, you know, like I say, the squirrels can find nuts better than we can, and, you know, birds can fly and

we can't. You know, every species has its own things, and we just have this specialization. And basically, what we have done is we have won the large mammal competition, all the large mammals. And large mammals are problematic because they need a lot of food and they need a lot of space. And so all the large mammals on this earth are either wiped out or we've got them under protection. So elephants and whales and chimpanzees, we have to have active efforts to preserve them or they'd all be gone by now. So that niche, the large mammal niche, we won by leaps and bounds. But there are more termites and ants and bees on the earth than humans by a long shot. And as I say, there are some things like the plague and things like that that have wiped out half the population of Europe a few hundred years ago.

So, no, we haven't become better than everybody else. We've just climbed the top of the mountain here in our one little area, and we just need to try to hang on. Yeah, well, I get it, because when you look at it your way, through your lens, it's not that bees would be better off if they had the same smarts as us. There's nothing they could do with human intelligence, so they're better off the way they are, and we're better off the way we are. No, they're doing fine like they are. And one of the basic principles of evolutionary psychology is that we are sometimes adapted for things from a past environment, and they're no longer adaptive in the current environment. And like a textbook example is our love of sweets. Back 50,000 years ago, you know, every time you encountered a ripe fruit, you ate it and you just took the sugar whenever you could get it because it was fairly rare and

it was a high energy boost. Well, now it's on, you know, everywhere, every supermarket shelf, every vending machine out in the hall, and it's not really adaptive to eat sugar all day long, every day. So you could say that in a similar way, analogous, we are adapted for small group collaboration with a hunter-gatherer group where it's all one big family, so to speak, and we know everybody and we trust everybody. And now we're in these multi-cultural societies where we have to interact with people that we don't know, that don't share our same practices and stuff. And maybe our small group cooperation will scale up and we'll solve this thing. But I would say it's not a foregone conclusion. Well, I really like talking to you about this because I think for me,

and I imagine for pretty much everybody listening to this, I mean, when was the last time you really stopped and thought about why are you human? What makes you human? And why do you do the things you do with the people in your circle? And it's pretty interesting to stop and think about that. Michael Tomasello has been my guest. He is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, and the book is called Becoming Human. There's a link to his book in the show notes.

Thank you, Michael. Okay, my pleasure. Bye-bye. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. My pleasure. Bye-bye. theme games and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong?

Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

The idea of a natural or herbal remedy is always tempting if you have an ailment, because if a natural remedy works, you can avoid taking a more conventional medication that could have side effects or cause other problems. Of course, the big if there is if it works. A lot of natural herbal remedies have been criticized and proven not to work or be very effective, while others show some real promise. So how do you know which ones work and which ones don't? Well, there is a beautiful new book out from National Geographic called Nature's Best

Remedies, Top Medicinal Herbs, Spices, and Foods for Health and Well-Being. The forward to the book was written by Tiarona Lodog, MD, who joins me to discuss this important topic. Welcome, Doctor. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So I know a lot of people have questions and are confused about this whole idea of natural remedies and herbs, and many people are skeptical, and I'm one of them. So help me understand it better. I think skepticism is actually a pretty healthy trait, and when you look at the field of natural medicine, there's an awful lot of claims out there, right? So the newest berry from the Amazon that'll cure everything. So I definitely understand that people might have a degree of skepticism when it comes to

talking about natural ways of managing our health. But I'll also just say that what gave birth to modern conventional medicine was really very much an acute care model. What was taking people's lives 100 years ago in this country was infectious disease. 42% of all deaths were due to infection. And because of public health, better sewage, immunizations, antibiotics, we really turned the tide on a lot of that acute infection. And what we were left with was then the success of our technologies with farming and with other technologies, which gave us a lot of conveniences that maybe we weren't really prepared for. And what I mean by that is that we have access to very calorie-dense food 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We almost all have cars or public transportation. We work very long hours now on often computers,

technology, so we're not as active as we used to be. We spend much more time inside. So now we have a medical system that was born out for acute ailments, we're kind of in a bit of trouble when it comes to dealing with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain. The answer cannot just be more pharmaceuticals. It can't be. Too many of the drugs have too many side effects, too many adverse effects. And I think we're going to have to find other strategies for helping people to really reclaim their health and their lifestyle and re-empower themselves on how they can take care of themselves and their family without having to go to the strongest form of

medicine every single time. But that doesn't necessarily mean, and I think this is where a lot of the skepticism comes in, is just because you can criticize conventional medicine doesn't mean, as you say, that the berries from the Amazon are going to cure your problem. Because you don't like this solution doesn't mean this other solution will work. Right. And as a conventionally trained physician, I certainly like conventional medicine. So, you know, I'm conventionally trained. And work is an interesting thing, what something works, right? I mean, there's not really many drugs that work 100% of the time in 100% of people.

And when we start digging into some of the medications like Tamiflu and Relenzin, we actually look at their effectiveness. They're not near as effective as we thought they were for treating the flu. And even more important, they were not effective at all at helping to prevent person-to-person spread like in a pandemic. So I think a lot of times people who are skeptical, the skepticism is good, but they also may not be critically thinking through all of it because there's a lot of things that don't work for everybody all the time. Let's take an example of probiotics. There's pretty good data that if you take an antibiotic and you also take probiotics, you can reduce antibiotic-associated diarrhea. There's also pretty doggone good data that if you have

a child in a daycare and rotavirus, which is common diarrheal-causing infections going around the daycare, if you give your child probiotics, it can help prevent them from getting the diarrhea. And if they do get it, it will shorten the duration pretty considerably. So this is an example of taking something along with something else to prevent a side effect or to prevent something from occurring in the first place. Now, there's good data on that. There's randomized controlled trials on that. It's pretty accepted in conventional medicine. But it is a probiotic, which can be found in yogurt, could be found in

kefir, or could be bought as a supplement. So I think it really depends upon what we're talking about, how effective it is. Tannins, tannins in tea, you know, like black tea. There are stories going back a long time about how, you know, people would use tea bags to treat a burn. Well, we actually know that tannins are highly effective for minor burns, both in helping to heal, to reduce pain, and also to prevent blistering and secondary infections. Tannins are now used in Western medicine in burn ointments, but it's the same tannins that have been in tea that people have been using for hundreds of years. So it's a fascinating field. It's fascinating, and National Geographic, I think because of their exploration of the world,

their exploration of plants and of animals and ethnobotany, kind of the perfect group to bring a really beautiful book like this to the marketplace because I think the resources and the tips that they provide are very sound and are not extravagant, and I think they can be very helpful for people. So let's talk about some of the things that really do work because I think in the world of natural remedies, there are things under that umbrella that don't work, and so we need someone to kind

of navigate through, for example, and I've looked into this because this is of particular interest to me, for example, that something like, I don't remember the exact number, but like 10 times more St. John's wort has been sold than has ever been harvested. And St. John's wort is supposedly for depression. Well, so clearly much of what's being sold as St. John's wort isn't what it says it is, which is a problem if someone's battling depression. And I know for years people have said that, you know, ginkgo biloba as an herbal supplement is good for dementia.

And it's been proven to not work. Yeah, we don't really have anything good anywhere for dementia, and that makes it a vulnerable category, right? Because the drugs we have really aren't very good for dementia. I have a mother with dementia, so near and dear to my heart. So when my father calls and says that he saw something on the Internet that is a natural remedy that cures dementia and that this doctor has cured thousands of people, but the FDA doesn't want anybody to know about it.

And I said, Dad, I said, Dad, you know, honey, no. And I hear the shaking in his voice, and he's like, but it says, and I'm like, Dad, there is no cure for mom's dementia. And then the tears. It's just like, I've got to do something. And so I'm very opposed to people making outrageous claims for things that are really hard and we don't have good treatments for. But I also, as a physician, understand somebody like my father's desire to want to help the person he loves the most, right? But it makes them vulnerable. And when you talk about adulteration, that's a separate thing.

That doesn't mean something does or doesn't work. What you're talking about is an adulterated product. I've been the chair of the United States Pharmacopeia Dietary Supplement Panel, one or the other. The USP is what sets quality standards for drugs and for botanicals and dietary supplements. And so I'm well aware of the adulteration problems. But in adulteration, we have adulterated drugs come into this country from China. So it's like adulteration is a problem with seafood, medication, supplements, and it needs tighter regulation. But an adulteration doesn't, just like if it's an adulterated drug, doesn't mean the drug doesn't work.

It just means it's a bad product. It's adulterated. So adulteration is an issue. I've been very active in that for almost 30 years, working with organizations and the USP to set better quality standards. Now, when it comes to things that work, that work or don't work, let me give you an example of one that just came through recently. There was a hospital that had patients coming in for cardiac surgery, and they were asked if they would like to participate in a clinical trial. Patients could opt in or not.

And they had, gosh, 120 people, I believe, opted into the study. And when they came out of surgery, they would be offered to inhale peppermint essential oil if they felt nausea. That's a common thing after surgery. Many people experience post-op nausea. That's a common thing after surgery. Many people experience post-op nausea. So when they gave them this little vial of peppermint to inhale, the people could inhale it and then rank their nausea. And if they needed to, they could repeat it a second time. If they were still experiencing nausea, they would then be given IV antiemetics, which is standard. In the study, all patients but

one had their nausea relieved by inhaling peppermint essential oil. That is a pretty interesting study because it was done in a hospital. It was non-invasive. It's inexpensive. People enjoyed it. They found it a pleasant experience. And if it didn't work, there was pharmaceutical medications available. But our antiemetics all have secondary side effects to them. So there is no just adverse free antiemetic. So for me, this is an example of where research can play an important role because this is a common problem in hospitals. The IVs, managing the patients with nausea, giving them the drugs, they can have side effects. When you could use something as simple as an inhalation therapy,

which could be administered by a nurse tech, I mean, a tech doesn't have to be a nurse, that's an interesting study for me. So when I look at some of these things, I'm going, huh, you know, fascinating. There was some research going on out in the UC schools looking at a plant that is not as commonly known called andrographis. And andrographis is a plant that's used up in Sweden and Scandinavian countries, and it has some effects on the immune system. And one of the UC schools actually did the study in patients with multiple sclerosis, and fatigue is a big problem with MS.

People feel very, very fatigued. So they randomized them to either get andrographis or to get a placebo and then followed them to get a placebo, and then followed them out for a year, which is a nice long study to see what the effects are. And at the end of the study, the people who had received the actual active had a significant reduction in fatigue compared to placebo. Now, in this case, they weren't looking to see did the herb cure MS, did it treat the MS? What they were looking for was even patients who are on medication feel very fatigued. Could this, in addition, improve people's quality of life? So that also is

fascinating to me. So there are examples. Turmeric is another interesting example. It's effects in the gut and the anti-inflammatory effects for people who have Crohn's or ulcerative colitis, that turmeric can be very beneficial for this, whether it's taken in the diet because it can be added into the diet or that it could be taken as a supplement. So I think there's a lot of interesting things out there that fascinate me. So can you give me a couple of things that you as a doctor slam dunk have no problem suggesting that your patients take because you've done the research and you know these things work? Probiotics. If you're taking antibiotics, if you get recurrent bladder infections, you know, to try to help reduce them, or if you've had a

problem with recurrent vaginal yeast infections. Zinc lozenges. I got no problem telling people if you're coming down with a cold upper respiratory infection, get you some zinc lozenges, suck on them frequently for the first 48 hours to really kind of help shorten the duration and the severity of your cold. It's like magnesium, I would probably be with one of my top ones. If you have recurrent migraines, if you're somebody that has recurrent migraines, try magnesium. 400 milligrams to 600 milligrams per day has a strong endorsement from the American Headache Society and the Canadian Headache Society for prophylaxis of migraines. So there are three things right there that I would never hesitate to tell people that

are also backed by very sound science. And there is a lot of that in this book. The book is National Geographic's Nature's Best Remedies, Top Medicinal Herbs, Spices, and Foods for Health and Well-Being. And the foreword to the book was written by my guest, Dr. Tirona Lodog. There's a link to the book in the show notes. Thank you, Doctor. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. You're a good interviewer. Nobody wants to have bad breath, so a lot of people use mouthwash on a regular basis.

And that turns out to be maybe not such a great idea. A study found that using an antiseptic mouthwash twice a day could increase your blood pressure, your risk of heart attack, and your risk of stroke. The study suggests that the mouthwash is not only killing the bad bacteria that gives you bad breath, it also is killing off the good oral bacteria which helps to control blood pressure. The American Dental Association does not recommend the use of mouthwash without a dentist's advice. It is recommended for patients with oral issues such as bleeding gums, infections, or post-surgery to promote healing, but most people don't need it and shouldn't use it on a regular basis.

And that is something you should know. Impress your friends with your incredible good taste and tell them about this podcast and tell them to listen. Just have them search for something you should know on any podcast app and look for the yellow light bulb on the blue background. Or just send them the link and say, click here. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper.

In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law,

her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends,

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