Something You Should Know - The Fascinating Gases that Surround You & Is Everyone Addicted to Something?

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Some very popular drinks turn out to be really bad for your teeth. This episode begins with that list of drinks, what they do to your teeth and some strategies to help you minimize the damage if you are going to drink them. https://news.uthscsa.edu/more-u-s-teeth-susceptible-to-silent-enamel-eating-syndrome/ We are surrounded by gases - oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, natural gas, steam. Gases are everywhere. They fill our lungs, power our movement, create stars, and warm our atmosphere. As important as they are (we wouldn’t be here without them) they are the least understood materials in our world. But you are about to understand them much better as you listen to my guest, Mark Miodownik. He is a professor of materials and society at University College London and author of the book It's A Gas: The Sublime and Elusive Elements That Expand Our World (https://amzn.to/3XDpcjX). People often say they are addicted to their phones or to shopping, or to social media or that their kids are addicted to video games. But are these things really addictions or just something to do when you have time to kill? What’s the harm of scrolling through social media or playing Candy Crush, or going shopping even if you don’t really need anything? That is what Talitha Fosh is here to discuss. Talitha is a psychotherapist who works primarily with addiction and she is author of the book, Hooked: Why we are addicted and how to break free (https://amzn.to/3XDW8sq). You should wear shoes when you drive. But not just any shoes. Some shoes are well-suited for driving and others are potentially quite dangerous. And what about driving barefoot? Listen as I sort this all out and tell you which shoes are the best to wear when you drive. https://www.rd.com/list/shoes-shouldnt-wear-driving/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, what the drinks you drink can do to your teeth and what you can do to prevent it. Then, the fascinating world of gases. You don't think about gases very much, but you wouldn't be here without them. We rely on gases for music.

We rely on gases for hearing in general. That's the waves going through gases is what we call sound. We rely on gases to get around pneumatic tires. Without them, bikes and cars won't exist. Also, the shoes you should and should never wear when you drive. And are we all addicted to something? The way I describe addiction is when we use something outside of ourselves to change the way we feel. Social media, shopping, you know, there's obviously the drink, the drugs, but we really can be addicted to anything.

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fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Yes, hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. I want to start today by talking about your teeth. Did you know that some of the drinks that you drink can literally erode your teeth, according to a study? Dental erosion is what this is called, and it can be subtle and hard to spot at first, but over time, too much of the wrong beverages erode the enamel, leaving you with thinner teeth, more sensitive, and more vulnerable teeth.

Among the biggest dental offenders are soft drinks, fruit and sports drinks, some herbal teas, lime-flavored beer, and seltzer fruit drinks. All of these drinks are acidic and will eat away at your enamel. If you do drink any of these corrosive beverages, you're better off using a straw and be sure not to brush your teeth right after drinking them. That just compounds the problem. You should rinse your mouth with water or a mouthwash to get that stuff off your teeth. And that is something you should know. I'm sure you know you have a sense of what a gas is.

You probably cook with natural gas. Oxygen is a gas. Carbon dioxide is a gas. Gases are everywhere. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for gases. But there are things about gases you likely never knew that are really interesting and affect you in ways you're about to discover. My guest is Mark Miodovnik. He is a professor of materials and society at University College London. He's the author of a book called Stuff Matters, which was a big bestseller, and his latest

book is called It's a Gas, the Sublime and Elusive Elements that Expand Our World. Hi, Mark. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi. Thanks for inviting me. So I understand, obviously, you find the topic of gases interesting, but why are we talking about it here? Why is it important for people to know and understand more about gases? Well, they are our life support system.

I mean, that's an obvious, I suppose, so what, which is that we're breathing oxygen now, And without it, you die very quickly. But it's more than that. The emergence of oxygen on this planet is an unusual occurrence. I mean, if you see oxygen on planets out there in the universe, it's a very good sign that there's life. And oxygen itself is intertwined with living organisms. And it's a very reactive molecule. So if you look at the evolution of this planet and how life came to be, oxygen is a big part of that. But not just oxygen, of course, carbon dioxide. So carbon dioxide is the original molecule and still is a very important molecule for all life on the planet.

And of course, you know, plants breathe it and and many bacteria breathe it. And so, you know, we've got this dance with the stuff that we breathe and we live at the bottom of 100 kilometers of atmosphere. So we're in a way we're at the bottom of a sea of gas. You know, you can think of us as little scuttling creatures. Above us is the ocean of gas. And that weighs down on us, actually. It has a weight, 100k of gas. Even though it's so light, you can't really feel it with your fingers, it has a weight.

And that weight is called the atmospheric pressure. And that really affects the weather. So, you know, you've got life itself. You've got the weather. So, you know, you've got life itself. You've got the weather. And then you just go into this whole world of gases that without which we would not have any of the technology we have today. So we rely on gases for music. We rely on gases for hearing in general, of course. That's, you know, waves going through gases is what we call sound.

We rely on gases to get around pneumatic tires, you know, without them, you know, bikes and cars won't exist. We, of course, the gas technology of gasoline. And of course, there's jet engines going to hospital, you'll find loads of gases there, go into any scientific lab, we wouldn't be able to do our work without gases, and we wouldn't be able to work without vacu gases. And we wouldn't be able to do our work without vacuums, getting rid of gases. All the silicon chips in the world, pretty much all the kind of advanced technology relies on getting rid of gases during manufacture and having very, very pure vacuums. So yeah, they're interesting. Well, but you mentioned gasoline. Now, gasoline is a liquid in my world,

and yet it's called gas-oline. Explain that. Well, there you go, because we pump it as a liquid, and actually one of the great things about it is that it has a high vapor pressure. And what does that mean, a vapor? Well, a vapor is when you get the molecules of the liquid becoming going into the gas form at at a normal temperature at our temperature and they and they and they do it very readily and and so when you take the vapor of the gasoline from your fuel tank and you mix it with oxygen through the carburetor that is the thing that gets put into the cylinder of the engine and it's the gas form the

vapor form that's doing all the work it would it doesn't work when it's liquid in that phase in fact you can you can throw a match into a liquid gasoline and it won't ignite it's only the vapor that ignites and in fact flames and and candles and all they're all gas technologies you know if you see a flame or you see a fire, you're looking at a gas. You just said that if I throw a match into a liquid bowl of gasoline, it will not ignite. No, it'll go out. Yeah, you need a mixture of oxygen and the vapor of gasoline. That mixture is what will ignite.

Because what is ignition? What is an explosion? What is fire it's it's not it's not just the molecule in this case gasoline so it's a hydrocarbon a sort of small hydrocarbon it's it's basically a molecule with lots of carbons and hydrogens you know kind of attached to it it's it's that reacting with oxygen so for a long time in the history of the world people didn't understand what a flame was. They thought it was actually a type of matter. And in fact, go back to the ancients,

and they thought that the elements were earth, air, fire, and water, and fire being an element. We now know that fire is a combustion. It's the reaction of oxygen with a vapour or with a gas. And so that's what you have to get. And that's why the hydrogen balloons that became the Zeppelins, the first airline that ever existed was a hydrogen balloon going from Germany to France, and then across the Atlantic to America. That was the first airline. That's in the early 20th century, late 19th century. It's an enormous balloon full of hydrogen. You'd think it was the most dangerous thing in the world. But because there's only hydrogen in there, it's not going to explode. It's only when it mixes with the air under certain in a fire, gas tanks exploding. That's liquid gasoline blowing up. That's combusting. It's not a vapor. It's a liquid. with oxygen and then that has to encounter a high temperature a spark if it doesn't do that it won't explode and that's what an explosion is by the way an explosion is the formation of a lot of gas like an enormous amount of gas in a very short space of time so if you in a millisecond you go from having a liquid to having something a thousand times bigger than that which is what gases tend to

be they tend to be a thousand times less dense than their liquid. So you go from something the size of a bottle to something the size of a room in terms of the volume of that material in a millisecond. That's an explosion. So explosions are the production of a large amount of gas. So living creatures like human beings, all living creatures create gases, right? Sometimes in embarrassing ways ways but we create our own gas yeah i know that's that's the beauty of this topic isn't it no because it's so human not really you know like you can't write a book about gas without having odors and smells you know these are all the gases that are also like i i encounter in the book and and and you know they're all part of our lives

and they're all either funny or you know crazy or weird or but they are a big part of our emotional life and i think that's the one of the things i really want to make the point gases as a subject is not just about technology and it's not just about science um it's about very It's very much about the senses. First of all, most gases don't smell. Most gases are invisible. Most gases you can't taste, smell, see, or touch. And that's an incredible thought because they're so important to us. For instance, methane. Methane is invisible and odorous, right? It's not methane you're smelling. And in fact, if you're wondering why you can smell gas coming out of, you know, a gas leak, it's not because methane has a smell. It's because they intentionally put in a garlic smelling odor into the methane supply. But in

order that we can all detect the smells, the leaks of gases. And so the gas in my gas stove is a gas. Can you make that or is it all natural? Because it's called natural gas, but is it all natural or can you manufacture it? You can manufacture it. There's a huge amount of manufacture of methane. So methane is the smallest hydrogen carbon. So it's got one carbon and four hydrogens. And it's very related to gasoline. It's much smaller than the molecules in gasoline. So because it's smaller, it just has a higher boiling point. And so at room temperature, at normal temperature, it's a gas. And so you pump it through pipes and you can either make it,

you can make it from, you know, oil and gasoline, but it is a naturally occurring. So that's why they call it natural gas in the same way the oil is naturally occurring. So they occur together generally. And that's the gas form. It sits above the oil. In the old days before that happened, because methane has a really interesting history in terms of use, because it wasn't used for heating first.

It was used for lighting and it was used as a form called you know coal gas so they were getting wood and coal and heating it up and that and it breaks down the carbon and molecules break down and they have hydrogen there and they and it gives off a gas and that is methane but it also gives off hydrogen and that was being pumped around um the cities of london and paris in the early 1800s as the first gas lighting as the first light city lighting before that you know all these big cities and towns and villages were dark at night and they were very dangerous places and especially london you know there's so much history of people getting killed and raped and assaulted and robbed and it all happened at night

in small alleyways in the dark and and the citizens of london were absolutely desperate for lighting so they can inhabit this wonderful city at night and not and not be and not be mugged and and it was methane piped through this through through the streets onto lampposts that provided that light and it's only much later that we started using it as a form of heating and as a form of cooking. And now, today, there's talk of banning gas cooking, so I want to ask you about that. I'm speaking with Mark Miodovnik.

He is author of the book It's a Gas, the sublime and elusive elements that expand our world. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals, be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so.

Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. This episode is brought to you by Melissa and Doug. Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and crafts for creative thinking. Melissa and Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world. Because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow. Melissa and Doug, the play is pretend, the skills are real. Look for Melissa and Doug wherever you shop for toys. So Mark, help me understand this whole thing about banning gas stoves. I've heard a lot about that lately and there are a lot of people who are upset about the idea of banning gas stoves because gas is the preferred

cooking method for a lot of people. So why is there a push to ban gas stoves? So coming back to what the flame is, you see that blue flame when it's mixing with oxygen. So it needs to mix with oxygen and you get that blue flame um when it's mixing with oxygen so what it needs to mix with oxygen and and you get that blue flame but but every single methane molecule coming out of the tap is not combusting with an oxygen so there's always a small proportion that are not doing it and they're becoming other stuff they're becoming things like carbon monoxide so and that's a very poisonous gas um or they become um small soot particles which which circulate and and you inhale um and and there's all sorts of um you know different nitrogen molecules that happen at high temperatures

and so you start inhaling if you're indoors and you're cooking by your gas stove you're inhaling these and you know i think until recently we didn't think it was a very big risk until we had smart meters that could measure air quality. No one was really thinking about it. But you put an air monitor that you use to measure the street quality of the air and you put it next to your stove and the red light will go off. Alarm. It's the worst quality air you can breathe. So that's why people are starting. I think we've just sort of lowered

or increased is that the right word we've increased our desire for lower risk in our lives right we don't want to be polluted by by the technology to be cooked with or light or drive around in you know all these all these technologies now under pressure because they have these side effects well that's really interesting because I think I grew up believing, because I think the industry told us that gas was a very clean burning fuel. That you were, unlike other things, it all burned and so it all disappeared and you were good to go. Yeah, I think it's all relative, isn't it? So it's clean compared to what? So it's not clean compared to an electric hob right you're having if you if you take the same meter we do

it in my kitchen because we got rid of our gas hob for this reason and and now the meter is green in our kitchen when we cook because we've changed our way so but if you compare that to a coal or wood yeah i mean it's far better. I mean, the amount of, I mean, wood fires are terrible in terms of pollution. Also, the other thing, and this is a key gas point, is that the harmful things in it are all invisible. The nitrous oxides are invisible. The little carbon particles are invisible. The carbon monoxide is invisible.

I mean, that's a really deadly killer. Well, since you swapped out your gas stove because of this, do you know, because I think people will think, well, it's okay because I turned the fan on above the stove, so I'm good. Yeah, that's definitely a good idea. But where does that fan go? I've looked at a lot of those fans, and some of them are really literally just go through a filter paper and then they recirculate it in the room and that filter paper is not going to absorb those molecules it'll absorb the little droplets of oil from your pan which is the other thing it's catching yeah so so unless the unless the fan is is is basically taking that air and venting it to the outside you're not doing yourself any favors so what is a gas that we haven't talked about yet that you think is really interesting and we should talk about?

The one we haven't mentioned, that's the big one, which started the whole industrial revolution of is steam. And really, the steam story is so fascinating. I couldn't do justice to how incredible it is because you just have to write a whole book on it but steam is this moment in history where we're trying you know there's loads of inventors out there who understand that if you can make a machine that can do the work of a horse or you you can make a machine that can you know you put energy in and it'll pump things or rotate things that that you that you'll change everything but no one

could get one to work and then 17th 18th century little inventors in britain and and in france because it's where you know a lot of the work is being done um suddenly crack it and and you get this early very clunky steam engines that are just pumping water out of mines and the reason why pumping water out of mines is important is because these are very deep lot holes which where we're mining coal we've cut all the wood we've cut all the trees down we need so we need wood for cooking and for heating so we're starting to burn coal you've got to get coal you've got to make a mine but if you live in britain they fill up with water because it rains a lot so you have to pump the water out of mines they're doing it with horses then they found actually you can make a steam engine do it if

you make this gas you create this gas by just heating up water it pushes a piston well actually it doesn't it sucks a piston because of atmospheric pressure and this is this is the big discovery is that you turn it from a gas to a liquid by cooling it that creates a vacuum that sucks the piston down and then you push gas back in. That's the condensing steam engine. And then, oh my God, then they suddenly realise, whoa, we can just do much more than a pumping. We can start to go places. And the thirst for a car, a steam car, happens in the 18th century. It takes 100 years to make one, and along the way, they find out something else. Actually,

the best way to use steam for transport is not a car. That's really difficult because it's a big engine. It's very heavy and the roads are bad and you can never get it to work. And it took them so long. But what worked was go on water because water can take the weight, doesn't make any difference. And there's a big advantage to be able to go against the wind with steam and so you get you get mass travel then suddenly people are going across the atlantic from london to york from paris and and and it opens up the population's idea of what it is to be human you can travel the world and and of course you get mass migration into america notably and um this changes the whole trajectory of America, like all these people coming from Europe.

But then the railways are born. And so then you get onto solid ground and it turns out you don't want a car, you actually want a railway because the iron rails can take the weight of these massive engines. And it's much, much later than the car comes along. And by the time the steam car is born

and can really do it, they've got the technology down, gasoline comes along and the internal combustion engine blows it out of the water and steam disappears. But it's such a shame because it basically for 100 years was preeminent. And if you think, well, God, I love steam. And it's true. I think if I, you know, there is something about a steam engine that is, that really delights the engineer in me. And I think everyone, it's got a very human quality to it, the steam engine. It's, it huffs and puffs and, you know, like us, you know, it emits things. It seems to have emotion. So, you know, yeah, I think steam is definitely one that we should never forget. I was surprised to learn that nitrogen is so important, and it's a pretty interesting story.

So tell that. So half the people on the planet alive today owe their lives to a gas that's in the air. It's called nitrogen. So you breathe it in every breath, but it's only the oxygen that you're taking. The nitrogen you breathe out again. But we need nitrogen because, look, like proteins you know it's all made of carbon hydrogen and nitrogen right so we need nitrogen all life needs nitrogen so where do we get it from we don't get it from the air we don't breathe we don't metabolize it by breathing it in there

are only a very few organisms that can actually do that and they're these sort of bacteria that exist in the soil. And all our nitrogen comes from them metabolizing it, dying and being made into plants, plants being eaten by us or by animals. And that's how we get our nitrogen. Now, basically, once you've used up your nitrogen from the land like that, you start to starve. This is a problem for all high density populations because they end up basically exhausting the nitrogen in the land. And it was recognized in the 17th and 18th century as a real problem. And they started using bird poo from places like Peru and Chile, like digging it from these very dry places and shipping across the world.

And when that ran out, they started mining the small areas of the world where there's a mineral nitrate minerals but again they run out and there was a guy a german who basically worked out a way of taking nitrogen from the air using a chemical reaction very very dangerous one and making it into fertilizer and his achievement he's a very checkered figure and in fact the he's also the father of chemical warfare so you know world war one you know he's a but now today you know that process of making fertilizer from the air um is you know it's put on all the almost all the agricultural land the only stuff it's not put on is organic farming and without it i, the latest calculations are that half the population of the world would not be able to live, like we would not have enough food without that one discovery. Okay, well, now I understand why you study this and why you write about it and want

to talk about it. Because there's a lot to learn. And what you said about natural gas stoves and why you switched yours out is certainly something for people to consider mark mio dovnik has been my guest and he is a professor of materials and society at the university college in london and author of the book it's a gas the sublime and elusive elements that expand our world and there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Great to have you on, Mark. Thanks. Yeah, thanks very much. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures

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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. Can you really be addicted to social media or shopping or playing online games? Or even can you be addicted to your work? These are things that consume a lot of your time. They're often hard to stop doing and you do them for not always the best of reasons. Sure, there are addictions to drugs and alcohol.

Those are true addictions. But are these other things really addictions? Or are they just a way to pass the time and are hard to stop? That's what Talita Fosh is here to talk about. Talita is a psychotherapist who works primarily with addiction and she is author of a book called Hooked, Why We Are Addicted and How to Break Free. Hi Talita, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you so much for having me. So let's start with what an addiction is because I think of an addiction like drugs, alcohol, nicotine, these are things that your body really needs and it's

hard to break free. Whereas the social media or shopping or spending too much time at work, they don't feel like addictions to me. They just feel like ways to avoid doing something else. And maybe you're getting something out of it, but it's not a true addiction so help help untangle this well I think that in today's society there are so many things that we can get a hit out of you know any kind of high the way I describe addiction is is that we when we use something outside of ourselves to change the way we feel. And so if we're looking at it from that perspective, we can really use anything to change the way we feel.

So social media, shopping, there's obviously the drink, the drugs, but even there is this doctor called Dr. Lemke, who talks about the fact that she was addicted to romance novels. And she realized that she was addicted to them, because in between her patients, she would pick up her romance novels as a way to distract herself. Because she was, you know, having uncomfortable feelings. So if we look at it, in that lens, we really can be addicted to anything. Video games is another one. Because all these things that we have that are so accessible to us, they all change the way that we feel, essentially. So I wonder where, though, is the line? Like, my son plays video games. He loves to play video games. But he can stop and, you know, we'll go do something. I mean, it doesn't seem like an addiction, but maybe if I left him if we've had a hard day, you know, playing a video

game isn't a bad thing. It becomes a problem when it makes our lives unmanageable. So when we're unable to do the other things in our life that we like to do, because we're stuck playing video games, and video games is a great example. Because, you know, obviously, it's increasing in popularity. And it's one that is sort of acceptable, oh, I'm just going to play my video games. But actually, if you're not careful, you slowly realize, okay, I'm going to choose to play my video game rather than going and seeing my friends. And then I choose it again and again. And before I know it, I've become very isolated, or I don't manage to get my homework in on time, because I'm playing my video games. It's those kind of unmanageabilities that with what we call behavioral addictions is much harder to see at

the beginning, because obviously, with drink and drugs, when your life becomes unmanageable, you know, it's quite obvious, you know, because you're drunk or you're high. But with behavioral addictions, like social media or gaming, as you say, there, you know, the problems can start off a bit more subtle. And I guess also, if you think about if it's causing problems, and you're still doing it anyway, then obviously, it's also become a problem. Yeah, I like that definition. If it's causing a problem, and you're still doing it anyway, then obviously it's also become a problem. Yeah, I like that definition. If it's causing a problem and you're still doing it anyway, then you got a problem. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, if it's destructive and you know that it's wasting your time

or causing you pain and causing other members of your family and friends pain, then I'd say definitely, you know, it's making your life unmanageable and that it's probably a problem. But it does seem that there is a difference between physical addictions like drug and alcohol, where if you do stop, there are physical symptoms. You go into withdrawal and it's really horrible. Versus if you stop playing video games, pretty soon you kind of forget about them and you go off and play baseball or

whatever you do. Yeah. That those are very different. Absolutely. I mean, obviously with the, with the drugs and alcohol, there's a chemical addition,

you know, in our brain chemistry that's being altered. And so when you stop that, you do go into a much more severe withdrawal. However, when we are engaging with any type of behavioral addiction, we are also releasing dopamine. Now, that dopamine is obviously going to be less from the behavioral addiction than what we are getting from if we're using drugs and alcohol. But pain and pleasure come from the same part of the brain. So every single time that we get a hit of dopamine or every single

time that we get pleasure from something, at some point, we will experience pain, which is what we've called a withdrawal. Now, as you say, these levels will vary. But in order for the brain to get back to what's called homeostasis, which is this sort of level playing field, this kind of equilibrium, we will at some point experience pain. I mean, I think about using social media, for example, and I have clients who do this where, you know, you get stuck scrolling. And even though you don't want to be scrolling, you keep scrolling, and it's really hard to pull yourself away from your phone, from the scrolling, even though it's way past your bedtime, and you don't really want to be doing it anymore. You feel like you can't,

and actually to pull yourself away from to pull yourself away from it can feel like a bit you know you can experience sort of apathy or you can experience a bit of a low and that is usually because you've released all this dopamine with the constant swipe or the constant scrolling and then eventually you you know you will have to feel that kind of oh god that withdrawal in order for your brain to level out now sort of there's not a time frame as to how long it takes for your brain to kind of come back to homeostasis but a lot of people say i mean obviously with alcohol and drugs it's abstaining for good but with behavioral addictions it's about 30 days for your brain to come back to that homeostasis for your brain to come back to that homeostasis, for your brain to come back to that level playing field.

So 30 days without gaming, 30 days without your phone. But in that time, it's a very interesting experiment if you think that you are addicted to something or that you use something a little bit too much to try and abstain for it for 30 days and see what happens. And is that the prescription? If you have a behavior that's causing you trouble, the best thing to do is just stop cold turkey? Yes. I mean, obviously, drugs and alcohol is very different. And I have to sort of, obviously, disclaimer, if you are sort of thinking of abstaining from that, and you need to seek medical advice if you've been using it for a long time. But I'd say, I mean, yes, let's say a broad prescription would be to stop for 30 days so that you're able to notice as well when

you stop something, you're really able to notice why you might be doing it or what feelings that you might be experiencing that might be causing you to do it in the first place. Because if we sort of go back to the definition of addiction, that we're using something to change the way we feel, we need to know what's going on underneath. And 30 days is a very good time to start with. I mean, I would always say probably a bit longer, but brain chemically, I'd say start with 30 days and see how you go. And actually, if I think about the example from this doctor that I was talking about who was addicted to romance novels, she started reading before, after she had given birth, she started reading these romance novels

to help her kind of go to sleep. They sort of soothed her. And then she, before she knew it, she was taking them into work and reading them every 10 minutes she had in between patients. And I think the question was, oh gosh, she eventually took time away from these books. She had, I think, 30 days or something. So she was able to figure out, okay, what else is going on underneath? Okay, I'm struggling with being a mom or I'm struggling with all my hormones and feelings. But the only way she was going to figure that out was if she took time away from these books. And eventually, that's not to say that I'm sure she's reading books again. It's not that she can never read them again. But it's a very good sign of perhaps what might be going on underneath and something to explore.

So I often wonder, well, first, what I wonder is, are people scrolling on their phone and playing video games because it makes them feel good or it prevents them from feeling bad about something else? And the second part of that question is, and if they stopped and thought about it, do you think most people would know the difference? That's a very good question. And I think it's probably a bit of both with lack of awareness, if that makes sense. So we start doing something because it makes us feel good.

And then we continue doing that thing because it probably makes us feel good. And then we continue doing that thing because it probably makes us feel good, but it also distracts us from other things that are going on in our life. I mean, if I use myself as an example, because the reason I started working with addiction is because I'm an addict myself and I'm coming up to 10 years clean. And for me, it started off with food, you know, changing my food, restricting my food. And it made me feel good initially to do that. But the reason I carried on restricting my food was because I then realized, oh, this gives me a sense of feeling in control. This is distracting me from other areas of my life that are perhaps difficult at the moment. And then at one point, you know, it takes over and it becomes, you know, very difficult to then stop. But I think it's probably

a mixture of the two. Something I think people wonder, I wonder about this sometimes because, you know, I will sometimes be in bed, maybe starting to scroll through social media and I know I should go to sleep, but I kind of can't stop, but it doesn't happen very often. But when it does happen, I think, God, do I have a problem here? And then when I put it down, it's fine. It's like, well, why didn't I stop 20 minutes ago? You know, nothing, nothing great happened in the last 20 minutes ago you know nothing nothing great happened in the last 20 minutes i should have stopped a long time ago it's very occasional but but then you think well gee that mean this what's going on here well it's it's a good exercise when

that happens because i usually find this for myself you know there are times where i can you know be on social media for i can pick up TikTok, for example, or Instagram, and have no intention of being on it, but be on it for a couple of hours and then think, oh my God, that's not what I wanted to do. That hasn't been a very successful evening. I had plans, right? What I usually then ask myself, and I'll ask clients to ask themselves is what went on that day? Was there something that's been going on that day, that week that you needed to numb from? It might not be anything in particular, but we are so automatic to pick up our phones anyway that sometimes there might be no reason, but sometimes it might be like, okay, we needed to numb ourselves a little bit more today, because we're feeling a little bit stressed about work, or sometimes, if anything, it's, oh, I'm feeling a little bit more tired, ironically, because we're still on our phones. But it really helps. I mean, I'm not sure if you've experienced this, but it really numbs us out.

You know, when we're swiping and, you know, scrolling on our phone, we're really not thinking about anything else. It's just these constant bits of content that are giving that hit of dopamine, especially on TikTok now. These short, sharp bursts of content are designed to get us experiencing more and more dopamine. So it's very difficult for us to take ourselves away from it, to pull ourselves away from it. But if you find that there's a time or, you know, one evening, it's harder than another evening, it's worth figuring out, okay, or worth asking yourself, is there any, am I more tired today? Am I more stressed about something? Do I need to talk about anything? Do I need to express anything? Those kinds of things can help us. But there is sometimes no reason as to why that happens. When it does happen, when it does seem like it's

more than just an occasional thing, when it does seem like you're asking yourself do i have a problem with this abstaining is it isn't a matter of trying to cut back it's kind of like it kind of reminds me of like you know cigarette smokers trying to smoke fewer cigarettes it's just yeah that doesn't really work that well unfortunately with as i said with sort of with alcohol drugs and cigarettes abstaining is really the only way forward. Abstaining completely, because as soon as you've had a sip of alcohol or any kind of or a toke of a cigarette, you've activated that addiction again. And it's very unsafe, you know, so that we're talking about well, if we're talking about chemicals, drugs and alcohol, nicotine, to abstain for good is obviously the only way into recovery. It's a little bit more sort of, there's a bit more of a gray area with behavioral addictions, because, you know, we have

to be on our laptops to email, we have to, you know, a lot of we have smartphones are everywhere. So it's about sort of starting for, I'd say to start for 30 days. But also, there are other things that you can do to help minimize the kind of exposure you're getting to the behavior. So for example, you know, if you are addicted to smartphone, I had a client who was addicted to smartphones and all the apps and everything, you know, being very activating and triggering all the time to getting an old school flip phone, you know, one that doesn't have all the thousands of apps on it. That can be a really good way, you know, with like food disorders as well. You know, we have to eat. It's not black and white so it's about okay how can we come up with a program uh like a plan like an abstinence plan it's called to put in place something that you stick to that you don't like basically boundaries with yourself

that you stick to with the health with the help of a therapist or the help of a rehab or whatever um that you don't break so that you have an abstinence plan that makes you that makes you feel safe and keeps you staying away from engaging in any addictive patterns, basically, or destructive behaviors. But if you don't feel that your, your life's that unmanageable, but you'd like to try, you know, abstaining for 30 days, definitely a good, a very good place to start. And just to notice, you know, notice what happens, how you feel, notice the cravings, because you'll get cravings. I mean, I certainly notice when I put my phone down, but I'm like, okay, no more phone for the rest of the day. I will notice myself trying to look

for my phone automatically, you know, it's like, where's it gone? Is there any sense or do you know or do you have a feeling since you talk to people who suffer with this, that if you have one, you probably have more than one of these kinds of addictions? I believe that if you suffer with some form of addiction, whatever it is, then it will most likely pop up in other areas of your life. I mean, that was certainly my experience. And with most of the, in fact, I think it's safe for me to say all of my clients that I work with, who suffer with addiction of whatever kind, once they put one addiction down, another one will pop up. They can be less severe. So for example,

putting down alcohol, you know, your addiction to alcohol and suddenly becoming addicted to exercise. Obviously, the addiction to exercise is much less harmful than the addiction to alcohol. Any idea why some people have no problem and others do. Why some people don't fall victim to, they can play video games and stop on a dime and say, sure, yeah, I'll stop. That's not a problem. And other people cannot. It's a great question. For me, it always comes down to nature versus nurture. There is proof and research to show that it can be genetic. So with alcohol, for example, there are different genes that can make you more susceptible to being an alcoholic. So that's definitely part of it. And if, you know, people call it an addictive personality, if that runs in your family, then, of course, you're much more likely to fall victim to that.

The other part of it is the nurture element to it. And this is all really about childhood and growing up and how your needs were or were not met. Because between the ages of eight and 12, most specifically, we're developing our sense of self, who we are, what we like, what we don't like, how we interact with our peers. And at that point, if our emotional and physical needs are not met, we make it mean something about ourselves. We think we're not good enough. We don't believe we're lovable. And

we develop these negative belief systems about ourself. And what I've seen so many times is that these things happen, you know, our emotional needs aren't met when we're younger or physical needs. And then as you grow older, you take these negative belief systems with you. And then, you know, we're then not going to behave in ways that are kind to ourselves or that are loving, we're going to, we end up behaving in very self destructive ways because of these negative belief systems that we carry. If I give a very simple example, if you're upset about something as a kid and you go to your parent or caregiver and say, you know, let's say someone was mean to you at school, so-and-so said this to me at school and I'm really upset about it. And the parent or caregiver says, oh, well, don't be silly. You shouldn't feel like that. That is an emotional

need not being met. The child needs to be validated on some level and feels very confused by the fact they're being told not to feel a certain way. And we internalize that and we think, oh my God, there must be something wrong with me. What's wrong with me? I'm unlovable, et cetera, et cetera. And these things do stay with us, these negative belief systems, unless they are challenged later on down the line. Well, I still wonder if scrolling on Facebook or shopping is really an addiction, or it's just something to distract yourself so you don't feel bad about something else. And as you say, it is a sliding scale, but well, it's a lot to think about. Talita Fosch has been my guest. She is a psychotherapist and the name of her book is Hooked, Why We Are Addicted and How to Break

Free. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Talita. Thanks for coming on. Oh, great. Thank you so much. The type of shoes you wear when you're driving really can make a difference, and there are several types of shoes you really probably want to stay away from. Probably the worst type of shoes to drive in are flip-flops, or really any kind of sandal, because they have the potential to just come right off your foot, and then the flip-flop or the sandal can get stuck under the pedal, and that can cause all kinds of problems.

Thick-soled shoes aren't so good either. Thin-soled shoes keep your feet as close to the pedals as possible, making them better suited to helping your feet gauge the proper amount of force needed to work the pedals. When you drive with thick-soled shoes like wedges, platform shoes, or even heavy boots, it could cause you to miss a pedal or press two pedals at the same time or use the wrong amount of pressure. High heels are kind of a nightmare too, and considering how cumbersome high heels are to walk in, it probably comes as no surprise that they're not very good to drive in either.

When you're wearing high heels, you only make contact with the floor at a very tiny point, a very small surface area, which means the shoe could slip. Plus, high heels force you to position your feet in unfamiliar positions, and the shape of the shoe can make it also difficult to apply the necessary pressure. Well, so you might be tempted to drive with no shoes, but when you're used to driving with shoes, driving without them can feel foreign, and that's not what you want when you're driving. Barefoot driving requires you to put more pressure on the pedals than you usually do when you're wearing shoes. So what should you wear? Well, ideally something Thank you. with someone you know by just using the little share button on the platform you're listening to this on right now. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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