Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Why You Should Listen to Your Fears & How Dogs Can Detect Disease

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, how to cut down on one of your pet's most annoying habits. Then, fear. What makes us so afraid of things like public speaking, the monster under the bed, or the creepy guy in the elevator? That is exactly the type of fear that you should trust, and you can figure it out later. But at that point, I would say, get out of that elevator, because that's your intuition telling you, we're out of here.

Starting point is 00:00:58 Also, you live your life based on a lot of assumptions. Maybe it's time to question some of them. Plus, dogs and medicine. Dogs are learning how to detect cancer, seizures, even diabetes. For something like diabetes, they can actually detect and alert to when someone is going to have a diabetic low. And they can actually do this up to 15 minutes before someone's glucose monitor tells them because they're sniffing this drop in real time. All this today on Something You Should Know. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there.

Starting point is 00:01:42 All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. 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 carothers hi welcome to something you should know admittedly i am more of a dog person than a cat person it's not that i dislike cats i I've had cats. I just like dogs better. And we have a really interesting segment coming up in just a bit about how dogs are helping

Starting point is 00:02:34 in medicine, how they're detecting disease. And this is really interesting. But I don't want to ignore cat people. So we start today with some interesting information about cats. One of the things I didn't enjoy about having a cat was when the cat would bring home a dead bird or a dead mouse that it had caught hunting outside. Well, there's a new study that found that if you introduce premium commercial food where protein comes mostly from meat, it reduced the number of prey animals that cats brought home by 36%. And also that playing with a cat for 5 to 10 minutes a day resulted in another 25% reduction of cats bringing home prey animals.

Starting point is 00:03:23 In this study, they played with the cat by simulating hunting, by moving a feather toy on a string and wand so cats could stalk and chase and pounce. And by letting them do that with toys, they seemed less likely to do that in the wild. So if you have a cat who likes to bring home dead animals, those two things, a meatier diet and playing with the cat more often, could reduce the number of times you get that dead mouse on the doorstep. And that's something you should know.

Starting point is 00:04:00 Everyone is afraid of something. We all have fears. It's part of being human. Fear serves us well by keeping us safe from danger. But some fears might also keep us from reaching our potential and enjoying life. I'm sure you've noticed that some people are just more cautious and fearful than others, while other people are more thrill-seekers than others. Why is that? Are we programmed that way from the start or not? And if you find that some fears are keeping you from doing important things in life,

Starting point is 00:04:34 how do you overcome that? Here with some great insight into how fear works and how to make it work for you is Helen Odesky. She's a licensed clinical psychologist, an anxiety expert, and author of the book Stop Fear from Stopping You, The Art and Science of Becoming Fear Wise. Hi, Helen. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, Mike. Good to be here. So we all have different fears.

Starting point is 00:05:02 We all know what fear is. We know what it feels like to feel fear. But from your perspective, what exactly is fear? Fear is our appraisal of danger. So it's the estimate we make when we're faced with a situation or a potential situation about what might happen to us. And obviously fear is a good thing because if we weren't afraid of anything, we'd all be dead. Absolutely. So fear is life-preserving, and so we want to be able to differentiate between the good fear, the fear that keeps us alive, and the fear that stops us from living the kind of life we'd like to live. And so where do fears come from? Is we, is it evolution? Are we born that way? Or is it the result of life experiences or what? Yeah, so I think it's a part evolution.

Starting point is 00:05:54 We have a part of our brain called the amygdala, which is our internal alarm system. And like any alarm, it's prone to false alarms. So it'll go off and make a giant noise inside our head and our bodies about something being dangerous. And when that happens, unless we literally think through it, if it's not an actual life-threatening danger, we have all the sensations of a life-threatening emergency built right in. Okay, but here's an example. So I don't like roller coasters, because every time I get on a roller coaster, I think I'm going to die, even though objectively, I know I'm not going to die. But I don't enjoy it because of the fear, whereas some people can go on a roller coaster,

Starting point is 00:06:38 and that same experience makes them happy, which I can't possibly understand. So sometimes the sensations that are produced are very similar to excitement. And if we label it as a welcome sensation, then our emotions tend to follow. So if you go into an amusement park with the idea, this is probably, if it's not going to kill me, it's going to emotionally scar me. You're going to feel that dread and you won't have an enjoyable experience. However, if you go in there like a lot of teenagers do saying, I've really been looking forward to it, it's summertime, let's go. And they welcome that sensation of their stomach dropping, then you're going to really feel

Starting point is 00:07:25 exhilarated at the end of it. And so why are some people one way and other people my way? Is it perhaps it's some horrible experience we had or something, or are we just wired differently? Or, I mean, is there a fear? Is there a fear spectrum and we're just kind of naturally on it somewhere just because it's who we are? Exactly. There is a spectrum, and it is also related to your life experience. So if you think about it as our constitution, our nature, we are probably wired differently for the degree of risk taking. Some of us are just more cautious by nature. So every time we go into a situation where something might go wrong, we might look at that roller coaster and say, I wonder what time the last time somebody fell from

Starting point is 00:08:16 this thing, or when was this inspected? If our mind is generally wired that way, that's our constitution. However, some people have had negative experiences. Maybe you went on a roller coaster when you were a little kid and you really hated it or you got really sick. And so that experience is invoked every time you go, unless you have a series of positive experiences to counteract that. So that spectrum that you talked about that we're all on, and I know some people who are extremely cautious and other people who are not really cautious, they're more

Starting point is 00:08:52 thrill seekers. Does it tend to apply to different parts of life? Or if people are cautious, they're cautious in most things, and thrill seekers are more thrill seeking in most things or is it very individual depending on the situation? This is a really good question. I'll try to tease this out. So fear for some people is a constitutional trait. So they are fearful in most situations. However, I have worked with people who are risk takers in most of their life and may have had an experience of anxiety where in one area of their life, for example, public speaking, they tend to be very cautious and very afraid. So let's talk about the fear of public speaking, because I think we've all heard those stories, the surveys of that fear

Starting point is 00:09:46 of public speaking is a bigger fear than the fear of death. And, you know, they repeat these surveys year after year, and it keeps coming back as the number one fear. Why? So a lot of that is what we pin onto public speaking. A lot of us have somehow grown up thinking that this is something that you have to be able to do and execute really well to be liked and to be accepted and to be considered a worthy human being. And so when we can't do it, we start feeling unworthy and less than. And so it's self-protective to say, oh, maybe there's a way to get out of this. So I don't have to look less than or feel less than or not be accepted or feel rejected. But it does sometimes seem when you can't get out of it and you have to go through with it. a lot of people can't kind of buck up and do it. They sabotage themselves, which just reinforces the fact that they didn't do a good job and now nobody accepts them and they've failed.

Starting point is 00:10:56 Yes. And I would say a lot of that is because they're in such an anxious state that they're better off taking a few minutes to calm their system down and re-engage. And there's all sorts of tricks that we can talk about to do that. But bottom line is, if you are in the middle of a very high anxiety state, we're talking eight, nine out of 10, it's very hard to get fluent speech out. You're feeling lightheaded. You're feeling like your world's about to crash around you. And it's very hard to produce something that sounds coherent and interesting and relatable. And so what are some of those tricks of the trade that will help people deal with that in the moment? So I think the first few minutes are really crucial. I think once people get into

Starting point is 00:11:46 it, most of us are able to just go on and talk about the topics we need to talk about. So one of the things that I like to suggest to my clients who are anxious is, hey, start by asking a question. By the time your audience engages with you and you take the 30 seconds to a couple minutes that that takes, you're already engaging with them just by virtue of needing to listen and pay attention to what they're telling you. So you're taking the focus off of you. The other thing that I like to say is ask people or tell them simple things like how much you want to be there and how happy you are to talk about whatever you're talking to them about. Because that's familiar to you. You know, introducing yourself, saying who you are, saying a little bit about yourself is very familiar.

Starting point is 00:12:35 It's automated. It doesn't require much scrutiny. Right. You know who you are. So that should be pretty easy to talk about. It's pretty easy. And it's pretty hard to criticize somebody just by telling you, Hey, this is my name. This is what I do. This is where I'm from. So don't launch into the content, introduce yourself. And then my third thing that I would say is have a bottle of water. Nobody's going to judge you in at some point in

Starting point is 00:13:02 the presentation, you say, excuse me, I need to get a drink of water. That slows you down, paces you, and lets you get right back in. So I want to talk about that fear that people have. You're walking down the street and somebody's coming at you the other way and you get that feeling, something's not right here. Has that been studied, and is that a thing? That is a thing, and that's actually a sign of danger that we teach people to pay attention to. Because if you're walking, and all of a sudden you get that spidey sense, that probably is a real danger alert. But what could it be?

Starting point is 00:13:44 And you should heed that what could it possibly be just because someone is walking down the street at you and and maybe they look disheveled or they look you know in your interpretation dangerous yeah it doesn't mean they are that's true however what we know about fear is it's pre-verbal. So if we're looking at using our fear wisely and being fear-wise, what we're looking at is saying, you don't need to justify why you're afraid in the moment. It's better to cross the street at that point and figure it out later.

Starting point is 00:14:20 It could be your internal bias. But it could be your life-preserving sense saying, get out of there. And I would rather encourage for personal safety that you got out of there and then thought about why that happened versus you being put in danger. Because a lot of us have that internal dialogue of, oh, you're being silly. Grow up. you're fine, nothing's going to happen. And probably most of the time nothing would happen. But still, how many times have we all gotten in an elevator with somebody we hesitated to do or we saw that person on the street or something made us feel uncomfortable? That is exactly the type of fear that you should trust.

Starting point is 00:15:07 And you can figure it out later. But at that point, I would say, get out of that elevator. There was something off. You don't need to know what it is. It's almost as if you trust that more than you do your verbal process at that point because that's your collective wisdom. That's your intuition telling you that's it. We're out of here. Fear is our topic today. And I'm speaking with Helen Odesky. She's a clinical psychologist and author of the book Stop Fear from Stopping You.

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Starting point is 00:16:39 Download Bumble and try it for yourself. So, Helen, talk about the fear of failure, because a lot of times people will use the fear of failure as the reason why they didn't try something because they didn't want to fail. So is the fear of failure a real fear, or is it just an excuse to use when you don't want to do something? The fear of failure is really the fear of what's going to happen when something doesn't go the way that we want it to. And my experience as a psychologist, it's usually a fear more of how hard we're going to come down on ourselves versus how hard somebody else is going to come down on us. So we might phrase it to ourselves, oh, nobody will let me live this down.

Starting point is 00:17:29 But really, it's probably a projection of how we feel and whether we're going to let ourselves live it down. Well, it does seem a lot of times people fear failure. And when they fail, they can't shake it, that they failed and they feel horrible that they failed. Is that part of that? Is that what we're trying to avoid? Yeah, we're trying to avoid that because that doesn't feel good. We all want to knock it out of the park every time, but we also know that even professional ball players don't usually have a rating of anything above 50%. So if you're looking at the Michael Jordans and the LeBron James, they don't dunk the basket every time. And so this idea that

Starting point is 00:18:14 we have to, it is this myth that a lot of us walk around with. Let's talk about the fear of rejection. I think that's one that affects a lot of people. It keeps people from, you know, asking someone out on a date. It keeps people from asking for a raise. They don't want to get rejected, so they just don't. So what's that fear? That's a basic self-protective thing. So we want to be around people, and it's a good rule of thumb, actually, that are accepting of us. So when we're around a lot of negativity or rejection, we tend to recoil. And if we've had those experiences, we tend to get self-protective and avoid those situations. So in order to overcome that, one of the things that I teach is that we have to start looking at rejection as not personal. So someone may not be

Starting point is 00:19:06 rejecting you, particularly if we think about dating. They've just met you. They don't really know you. So whatever they're imposing on you probably has more to say about them than it does about you. And so if you can find a way to look at those situations in neutral terms, so I'm just looking for somebody where it's a goodness of fit, where I feel comfortable, where they like me and I like them and it feels easy, then I think you depersonalize it from that self talk that we get often, which is, oh, they didn't think I was good looking enough or they didn't think I was smart enough or funny enough, or all those, those tapes that start playing in our head. So one of the interesting fears that, that really is seems like a colossal waste of time

Starting point is 00:19:55 is the fear of what other people think of you, because you can't make everybody happy. And why should you try? But still, you know, many of us worry about that. We want to be liked. We want people to think well of us. And why is that so? Well, I mean, it's obvious why it's important, but it does seem like kind of a waste of time. It absolutely becomes a waste of time. And it is important because if you think about it from an evolutionary standpoint, if you weren't accepted, you lost resources. You couldn't get access to food, shelter, or a suitable partner so you could reproduce. So you really had to think about that and make sure that you fit in with the group. Now, a lot of us take it to the extreme and start worrying about what people might think about our hairstyle or our choice of job or even what type of car we have, right?

Starting point is 00:20:49 And you're right. We don't control it. So a lot of it has to do with how we feel about ourselves and whether we accept ourselves and our choices. And we're better off focusing on accepting ourselves if we want to get better with trying to say, okay, it really doesn't much matter what my neighbor thinks about this situation because it's important that I'm okay with it and I am in concert with myself and feel good and accept my choice. One of the things that is interesting to me about fear is that if you look back at all the things you've been afraid of, whether it's, you know, monsters under the bed or, you know, whatever, almost none of them were worth being too upset about. Obviously some would be, but

Starting point is 00:21:42 it's like we don't really learn from that, that life isn't necessarily as fearful as we think it is, but it doesn't typically change our behavior. We still act that way. And so I would say it brings us to this interesting idea of what do we consider courage? Do we consider courage to be the absence of fear, Or do we just consider fear as part of human condition, notice it when it's helpful, and then decide to live life with it, knowing that it will pass just like our fear of monsters under the bed, and that if we act with it, we stand to gain a whole lot more life choices and opportunities. So what does it mean then to be courageous?

Starting point is 00:22:27 What do you do with the fear and still act courageous? For example, you're petrified to speak in public. So maybe you don't speak in public. Other people might be petrified to speak in public, but they do it anyway. So what are they doing with their fear? How are they moving it over and allowing themselves to go speak in public, but they do it anyway. So what are they doing with their fear? How are they moving it over and allowing themselves to go speak in public? So what you do is you have to acknowledge what it is. So it's not life-threatening, it's a fear. You have to accept that sometimes you're

Starting point is 00:22:59 going to feel that, and then you have to act with purpose regardless. So if your purpose that day is to tell your company about some bad news and you're understandably afraid of their reaction, then you would do that regardless of whether or not you felt afraid. And that in my book would demonstrate courage. So when you have a fear that you've learned, you're afraid to go in the water because something bad happened to you. You're afraid to go in the water because something bad happened to you, you're afraid to go on roller coasters because you had a bad experience. When you have a fear that you've learned, is the trick to unlearn it? Or is the trick to learn something else? I mean, how do you cope with that fear and move on? So we can have an experience where danger learning takes place, and then we can have experience where safety learning takes place.

Starting point is 00:23:52 So danger learning is just like it sounds, is the assessment where we say, uh-oh, if I go in the water, there's a possibility I might drown. Water equals danger. Safety learning is if I go in the water, I better be around other people because that creates safety. Because if I do have a problem, somebody has a chance to help me out. Safety learning is taking a swimming class. Okay, it's really not dangerous to be with your head inside the water. So the more we can't undo danger learning, but the more safety learning

Starting point is 00:24:26 we engage in, we create an equality between those two parts of our brain and we can overcome some of these prior experiences that we've had. And a lot of people want to unlearn the danger, but it's like learning a language. You're never going to unlearn. If you're an English speaker, you're never going to unlearn English. If you learn French, you'll know both. And you'll be able to communicate on par in both, potentially. I don't know if you can answer this or if there's been research that you know off the top of your head. But that spectrum that we were talking about before, is there a sweet spot where most people are? Are most people kind of fearful? Are most people not very fearful? Do you get a sense of that? I mean, obviously,

Starting point is 00:25:11 the people you talk to are probably fearful, or they wouldn't be coming to see you. So you probably have a skewed view. But is there research on this? There's research on what's called the big five traits, one of which is openness to new experience, which you can look at as risk-taking. And that trait, those big five traits, stay stable over a lifetime. Now, there's a range within them, but we tend to have a spot there. You know, I wonder overall how people feel about their fears. And what I mean by that is, for example, as I said in the beginning, I'm afraid of roller coasters. I don't like them.

Starting point is 00:25:55 And I don't have any big desire to change that, that I'm perfectly fine with that fear. Yes. So that's where, again, brings us to self-acceptance. As long as you can accept that it's okay to be who you are and play to your strength and maybe tweak some skills that you're hoping to expand, you're in pretty good shape. Well, as I listen to you talk, it's so interesting how fears are so important in the sense that they keep us safe, they keep us out of harm's way. And yet, if we're not careful, we can let fears kind of keep us from life. And it's important to understand the difference and how to manage those fears.

Starting point is 00:26:36 My guest has been Helen Odesky. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and author of the book, Stop Fear from Stopping You, The Art and Science of Becoming Fear Wise. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Helen. I appreciate your time. I appreciate your time as well. Thank you for having me on. 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.

Starting point is 00:27:14 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 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.

Starting point is 00:27:41 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

Starting point is 00:27:58 your podcasts. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited

Starting point is 00:28:26 and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences,

Starting point is 00:28:43 career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a dog person, you're going to enjoy this next conversation. And even if you're not a dog person, you're still going to find it fascinating. As you know, dogs do a lot of things to help people. We have seeing-eye dogs,

Starting point is 00:29:27 service dogs, police dogs, bomb and drug sniffing dogs. Dogs do a lot. And now there's a reason to believe that they can help us with medicine. Maria Goudavage is a journalist who's written about military dogs, secret service dogs, and her latest book is called Doctor Dogs, How Our Best Friends Are Becoming Our Best Medicine. Hi Maria. Happy to be here. So obviously you are a dog person, so why the interest in how dogs are helping people? Where did that start? Well, I've always been interested in dogs and working dogs and what they can do. When I was a little kid, my dad used to tell me, he was a soldier in World War II. He was only 18 and he was drafted. And he would tell me about the dogs who worked with his troops by day, saving lives by sniffing

Starting point is 00:30:21 out bad things. And then at night, they would save souls by sniffing out and seeming to know who needed the most help, who was really hurting that day. And my dad was young and homesick. And oftentimes, the dog who was working with them would go to him. And it would just give him a little taste of normalcy to throw a ball for the dog and just snuggle with the dog. And I became a journalist and eventually wrote some books on military dogs and Secret Service dogs, and I'm a bit of a science geek. And I started hearing about this job that dogs had more and more, which is sniffing out disease.

Starting point is 00:30:59 And it's sort of this cutting-edge world that I was fascinated with, and I thought, what a great way to bring together my love of working dogs and my fascination with science and the sense of smell. So when did this first begin? When did somebody notice, you know, hey, look what that dog's doing. Maybe it can help us with science-y, medicine-y kind of things. How did all this start? The first dog to appear in scientific literature was a little dog named Baby Boo. She sniffed out her person's cancer on her leg. She had a melanoma. The dog told her in no uncertain

Starting point is 00:31:34 terms by biting at her leg that there was something there. And that was the first time in scientific literature. A little flurry of interest after that, but nothing really got going until, nothing serious got going until the early 2000s when another article appeared in the journal Lancet. And this kicked up more interest and slowly built up. In the early 2000s, people started looking at dogs saying, what can they do? Can they detect, they can detect cancer? Can we have them? Can we figure out? These freelance dogs seem to be telling their people, you've got cancer. There are all these anecdotes about people who say their dogs told them. So science started looking into it

Starting point is 00:32:16 in a much more rigorous way. And that would be about 15 years ago, up to 20 years ago, and for all kinds of diseases. And it's just slowly progressed. And now it's really taking off just in the last few years. More universities and really great training centers are getting involved in very rigorous scientific work. With dogs, we're actually really happy to do the kind of work we're asking them to do. And so what is it that dogs are doing? Dogs smell a lot of things. That's kind of what they're known for. How are they differentiating disease and how do they know and how do they then say, hey, this is cancer you've gotten and what's going on?

Starting point is 00:33:02 Okay. So dogs have to be specifically trained for the disease we're asking them to sniff, just as bomb dogs have to be trained on the explosive scents and narcotic dogs. We can't just say to a dog, can you just sniff out whatever's going on with a person? For something like diabetes, they can sniff out, they can actually detect and alert to when someone is going to have a diabetic low, for instance. And that's super important. They can actually do this up to 15 minutes before someone's glucose monitor tells them because they're sniffing this drop in real time. Now, we don't know, scientists don't know what they're sniffing in any of these cases. There are these volatile organic compounds, which are chemical substances released into the air. Scientists are trying to figure out what

Starting point is 00:33:48 makes up the scent of someone going into a diabetic low or certain cancers that dogs are being asked to smell in laboratories. But how they do it, let's just talk about diabetes, is they take samples from lots and lots of people in diabetic lows. And then they'll take samples, let's say sweat samples from the back of your neck. Right now, they could rub the back of your neck with a cloth and put that in the freezer. You'd be in control. I did this, actually. And other people with diabetes would be tested while they're in a diabetic low.

Starting point is 00:34:27 And they would have these different things. The dogs will be in a little setting where they're asked, okay, well, here are these little things. They're hidden in these ports and they'll have the dog sniff each port. And if a dog has any kind of change of behavior at all with the one that we want them, in this case, the diabetic low, they get a reward. They get a treat, a bounce of a ball, and the dog learns that, oh, this scent is different. And eventually they come to be able to establish over many, many samples that this is what they're being asked to sniff. So a dog can't detect all kinds of diseases. Some dogs have been asked to detect a few different ones, but they're really, really trained to detect one thing. They're specialists, just like doctors are. So those who detect cancer are given different types of cancer. They're not given tumors. They're

Starting point is 00:35:17 given samples of blood or urine or saliva, exhaled breath. And they need a lot of different samples because otherwise, dogs cheat. Dogs want the easy way to get their treat, their reward. So they'll memorize a person. They'll say, oh, that's Fred. Oh yeah, Fred. Fred, he's the one I always get a reward for instead of the smell of cancer. And so scientists are working to find out what the chemical signatures of all these diseases are. And we're are working to find out what the chemical signatures of all these diseases are. And we're hoping that dogs will be able to tell people what this is. And it's just a matter of working back and forth. So because you had started this by saying there was this one dog that smelled melanoma or some cancer on it with no training and somehow alerted to the fact that there's something wrong here.

Starting point is 00:36:07 But that's not what really happens. What really is going on is they're being very specifically trained. Yeah. So I should clarify. Some dogs are like maybe someone who's listening. Their pet dog has been nudging a certain spot on their body. I mean, dogs are going to nudge no matter what. So people shouldn't get worried about that. But sometimes dogs will really focus on a part of

Starting point is 00:36:29 the body. A woman who founded the organization Medical Detection Dogs in England, it's a fantastic organization, her dog had been insistent pressing on her chest all the time, nudging her, even pawing at her. And she finally got checked. She had breast cancer. And so that is, it is rare, but some dogs can tell that something is off and maybe they can even sniff where it is. And they just may be trying to tell you what's going on. But the dogs who are used in scientific settings are trained really, really specifically. And the training is always getting better because we're learning that dogs are very specific. They're sniffing out things like malaria. They're trying to find out from socks of children in two schools in the Gambia, which children have malaria, which children don't. And the researchers found that they actually had to train the dogs again because the dogs were learning to the schools from which the children were donating socks.

Starting point is 00:37:34 So the school scent was heavier than the malaria scent. So there are all kinds of factors that have to be considered. And why are we doing this if you can just do a medical test? You just do an x-ray or something. Why are we having dogs do this? There are all kinds of cancers that don't have good early detection. For instance, ovarian cancer. I unfortunately have this in my family. My mom died of ovarian cancer and several aunts have perished from this. And so there's nothing, there's no gold standard for ovarian cancer as far as early testing before symptoms. The symptoms are so quiet. And dogs at the University of Pennsylvania

Starting point is 00:38:17 have been found, have found ovarian cancer as early as stage one in samples of plasma from women with ovarian cancer. And this is, I was there one day when they're actually sniffing out the sample of plasma from one drop of plasma. It was actually a drop mixed with a drop of saline. So it was a half a drop of plasma and the dogs were alerting to that. So it's amazing what they can detect when they're really well trained. And the idea isn't that dogs will be in your doctor's back office sniffing out your samples. The idea is that dogs are going to one day lead to technology called an e-nose, for lack of a better term. An e-nose will help rapidly, inexpensively, and at very early stages detect cancers. But isn't there just always a chance that,

Starting point is 00:39:13 you know, the dog's just not into it today. It's not feeling it, having a bad day. And so how accurate can this be if we have to rely on a dog that may or may not just be wanting to do it today? So far, dogs have not been asked to diagnose people. It's really proof of concept right now. Do certain types of dogs seem to be better at this than others? Actually, that's a great question because there have been, typically you'll see Labrador retrievers, German shepherds, dogs who are often used in all kinds of, as working dogs in the military and police dogs and guide dogs. But it turns out that a lot of different dogs are really good at this.

Starting point is 00:40:01 I actually saw a dog detecting Parkinson's disease up in Washington State recently. And this dog is a Pomeranian and she wears a tutu to work when she goes in, she gets turkey as her reward. And so what the dog really needs, it's not the breed so much as a focus. They need to be a pretty focused dog. And more than that, they have to want to work for a reward. So if the dog really wants food, kibble, a treat, a toy, that's the key. It's their paycheck. So a dog gets these paychecks and they have to be really reward-driven to do this work. If a dog's like, whatever, food, toys, I just want to sit around the fireplace,

Starting point is 00:40:43 they're not going to make a great detection dog. How hard is it to train a dog to do this? To train a dog well, actually, is difficult. It can take many months for a dog daily to come in. And these dogs, by the way, I don't want people to picture beagles locked in cages in laboratories. These dogs are generally dogs who come in, they're volunteered by their people. They come in for a day or a couple of hours to a university or a training center. And they work, as I was saying, they have to get to know the scent and they have to really make sure they're on that scent directly. And it can take months and then dogs can be fooled by sometimes they're sniffing out the person, the skin that falls off. We shed so much skin,

Starting point is 00:41:34 so many skin cells every second. Some dogs have been found to alert to the person who put the sample together. So they have to be really careful so the dogs aren't sniffing out the wrong things. It's really a matter of us learning what we need to do because the dogs will sniff out and tell us about what we ask them to do. And so what's the future timeline of this? I mean, when does this actually become really, really practical and useful, if ever? Some people guardedly optimistically are saying it could be as soon as five years which I would love with with my skin in the game of ovarian cancer. Others don't dare have a timeline and that's that timeline is for not necessarily everyone being able to

Starting point is 00:42:21 have access to this through their doctors, but through the initial testing of these kinds of e-noses for people. So I know I've heard before, and I imagine many people have, this idea that there's been some research, dogs can maybe smell cancer. There've been anecdotal stories in the news about that. But how else are dogs involved in human medicine? Oh, many ways. In fact, the dogs are trained. We talked about diabetes already. The dogs are trained on illnesses like seizure disorders. Until recently, researchers thought, no, no, people who have seizures don't have a scent. There's no change of scent. Dogs admittedly, even to them, seem to alert, get nervous before their people would have a seizure. And they thought they were detecting something going on with the brain, some change of heartbeat or something. But recently, there has been a scent associated

Starting point is 00:43:19 with pre-seizures. And also, dogs have been trained on the scent of someone in seizures. And yes, dogs can smell seizures. Again, we don't know what they're smelling, but their sense of smell is so incredibly good. So it really seems like in terms of training dogs to smell things, really the sky's the limit. As we learn more about what these dogs can do, they're being used more and more different ways. There are people who faint, who lose consciousness out of nowhere. There is a woman in England who went to meet the queen and she had this, she was part of the medical detection dogs contingency and the queen and Cam and camilla and others are are big fans of these these doctor dogs and so there was a demonstration and this woman was there with her

Starting point is 00:44:13 dog and her dog started alerting to her during the demonstration at the buckingham palace stables horse stables and and this woman was crestfallen because she wanted to be there while the queen was watching the dogs do what they did. But she went, she lay down, she lost consciousness, she came back, she was shaky and typically just in a really bad state afterward. But at least she was not fainting in front of the queen. And she actually got to meet the queen after and her dog, being a dog, because these dogs save lives and they're amazing in so many ways. But at the end of the day, they're dogs. This dog snortled his nose into the queen's purse while they were standing there.

Starting point is 00:44:55 So the dogs get to be dogs. That's the thing about these dogs. Even when they're doing this life-saving work at home, they always get to cut loose and just be dogs. And that's the beauty of it. Wow. Well, it's pretty interesting. You know, you kind of wonder why no one has dove into this before. I mean, why did it take till now before somebody said, hey, maybe dogs could play a role here?

Starting point is 00:45:21 Yeah, that's a great question. And actually in so many things, because dogs are now being asked to sniff for rare or endangered species. They're asked to sniff out archaeological finds. People can't find things that easily, but dogs are able to do it. So I think as we're realizing just what dogs can do, they're going to be getting more and more of these jobs. And dogs love to work. They love to have a job. In fact, when I started doing research about a decade ago on military dogs, I decided my dog needs a job. And so I just, not a real job, but I let him sniff for treats around the house. And I have certain things that are placed in certain places, and he has to find them. So dogs love the challenge of finding their food, being able to work for a living.

Starting point is 00:46:14 I'm curious, since you wrote the book about Secret Service dogs, because I think most people don't think of, when I think of the Secret Service, I don't see a dog nearby. There's just guys in suits and sunglasses. What call them friendly dogs. And they're there to sniff for people with explosives. So they look, they're not the kind of dogs like Belgian Malinois or German Shepherds with the pointy ears, where people will kind of go around them to get away from them. They're just these affable, friendly dogs. But they do a really serious job. And they're able to track explosives, to track people with explosives. And so that's a job that's actually in the public eye. And a lot of people see there's a character named Rhodey who's out there.

Starting point is 00:47:13 And I mean, they're all characters who work there. You have to be able to really brave the crowds and be tough about it and friendly at the same time. There are dogs who are very close to the White House. You will see with their guys in dark glasses, and they're the dogs, they're typically Belgian Malinois, and Belgian Malinois are like smaller, more lithe, really badass German shepherds. And they're there to protect the White House.

Starting point is 00:47:43 So they're closer to the White House. They're with the guys who will tackle anyone who tries to get close to the White House. And then if you visit the White House, there are dogs you won't see who are there to sniff you as you go in. So there's a room and you go into this one room as you're being screened

Starting point is 00:48:01 and you're asked to stand on these two little yellow footprints. And then you go and a dog has just sniffed you and given you the thumbs up that you don't have an explosive and you can continue. And everywhere the president goes, there's a dog. There are dogs to screen everywhere. They're so well-trained and the dogs of the Secret Service have absolute specialties. They either sniff for bombs or they go after bad guys. And in the military, a lot of dogs do both. But in the Secret Service, because they're protecting the highest office in the world, they're specialists. And what about a really good story about how the dogs saved the day? Back in, oh, I don't remember the year right now, but 2014, I think. People are always trying to jump the White House fence for one reason or another. And a dog named one night, one evening, someone got over the fence and was not stopping no matter what. And there are a lot

Starting point is 00:49:00 of people guarding the White House and he wasn't stopping and everyone was trying to get him to stop. And just like a couple of weeks before that, someone had gotten into the White House and there was egg on the face of the Secret Service there for a while. But a dog named Hurricane, a black Belgian Malinois, gorgeous dog, was released by his handler. And the dog tried to apprehend him, you know, grabbed, grabbed hold of the guy. And the man started beating on the dog, kicking him, punching him. The dog wouldn't go, wouldn't let go. He was, he, he was there. His handler tears up, this big tough guy tears up when he thinks about what his dog, he said, my dog would have given his all to hang on to that guy. And they were able to apprehend him and no harm was done. But Hurricane was a hero. They really needed a hero at that time. And he's actually, I'm still in touch. Hurricane is

Starting point is 00:49:55 happily retired now. And he didn't suffer any bad wounds. He really wanted to keep working that night, but they took him to the vet and made sure he was okay. He just had some contusions. Well, I love these kind of conversations, being the dog person that I am. But it's also just from a scientific point of view, just amazing the potential that these dogs have in helping in medicine. Maria Gutavage has been my guest. She's a journalist, and the name of her book is Dr. Dogs, How Our Best Friends Are Becoming Our Best Medicine.

Starting point is 00:50:30 And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Maria. Thanks for being on the show. Thank you so much. You know, it's interesting when you think about it that so much of how we live our life is based on assumptions. We just assume so many things. But when you question your assumptions, it's really amazing how many great ideas you can come up with.

Starting point is 00:50:55 According to Joel Salzman, who's author of a book called Shake That Brain, sometimes those great ideas translate into money. For example, we assume that the way we typically board an airplane is the most efficient. First, the people seated in the back of the plane get on, then the people in the middle, then the people in the front. Well, somebody questioned that assumption, and it turns out to be false. First, boarding people seated at the window seats, then middle seats, and then aisle seats is faster. And there

Starting point is 00:51:26 is some evidence now that just letting people board randomly is actually more efficient. And the payoff is that planes can board and take off faster. We assume that combination locks have to be number-based. But says who? One man has marketed a whole line of combination locks with letters, so you can use words as the combination, and he's captured a good portion of the market. We assume that a Do Not Disturb sign should say Do Not Disturb. But, well, no it doesn't. The Hard Rock Hotel had signs that didn't say Do Not Disturb. They said, I hear you knockin, but you can't come in,

Starting point is 00:52:05 which are lyrics from the Dave Edmonds 1970 hit song. The payoff is that it's different, it's clever, people remember it, they talk about it, and it generates buzz, just like we're talking about it right now. And that is something you should know. If you heard an advertiser in this podcast and you thought, that sounds interesting, all the websites and promo codes, they're all in the show notes for this episode. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Starting point is 00:52:37 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. Lauro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity.

Starting point is 00:53:10 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. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-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 Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot.

Starting point is 00:53:50 During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Why You Should Listen to Your Fears & How Dogs Can Detect Disease

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