Something You Should Know - The Magic Words To Get What You Want & Why You Get Headaches

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Groceries are expensive. So this episode begins with a very effective and uncomplicated strategy that can save you a ton of money at the supermarket with just a little effort. Source: https://www.grocery.com/the-grocery-game/ When you want to communicate, connect or influence people, certain words are more impactful than others. In fact, there is a whole new science of language regarding this. At the forefront of it all is Jonah Berger, marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of several fascinating books including his latest, Magic Words: What to Say to Get Your Way (https://amzn.to/3FctHIE). Listen and you will be amazed at how changing a few words when you speak or write can drastically change the effect of what you are saying.  We all get headaches from time to time. What causes them? What is it that actually hurts? What’s the difference between a regular headache and a sinus headache or a migraine? Are headaches trying to tell us something? Listen as all of this is explained by Amanda Ellison, a physiologist and neuroscientist at Durham University and author of the book Splitting: The Inside Story on Headaches (https://amzn.to/3FdrnRI). You wouldn’t think that a you can tell much of anything about a person’s health based on their handshake – but it seems you can, at least some of the time. Listen as I explain how the two are related and why a firm handshake is important. https://www.prevention.com/health/a20431307/weak-handshake-linked-to-stroke-risk/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! The Dell Technologies’ Semi Annual Sale is on, with limited-quantity deals on top tech! Save on select PCs powered by the latest 12th Gen Intel® Core™ processors, like thin-and-light XPS 13 laptops, Inspiron laptops and 2-in-1s. Plus, get savings on select accessories, free shipping and monthly payment options with Dell Preferred Account. Save today by calling 877-ASK-DELL Visit https://NJM.com/podcast for a quote to see how much you can save on your auto insurance! With With TurboTax, an expert will do your taxes from start to finish, ensuring your taxes are done right (guaranteed), so you can relax! Feels good to be done with your taxes, doesn’t it? Come to TurboTax and don’t do your taxes. Visit https://TurboTax.com to learn more. Intuit TurboTax.  Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions and manage your expenses the easy way by going to https://RocketMoney.com/something ! Discover Credit Cards do something pretty awesome. At the end of your first year, they automatically double all the cash back you’ve earned! See terms and check it out for yourself at https://Discover.com/match 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, a very effective way to save money on groceries. Then, how to choose and use words wisely, because different words affect people in different ways. For instance, losing is bad. Being a loser is even worse, right? Cheating on a test is bad, but being a cheater is even worse. And so research shows that one way to get students to cheat less is just by telling

them, well, you know, cheating would make them a cheater. Then what does your handshake have to do with your health and understanding headaches and all the different kinds, from tension headaches to migraines. What's really interesting about migraine is that it's misdiagnosed very often. So oftentimes people will say, oh, I had a headache last week. It was a terrible, terrible migraine. And actually, it was just a bad headache. This is a real problem in headache related research all this today on something you should know

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The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. I'm sure you have no doubt noticed that food prices over the last several months have gone up a lot. So wouldn't it be great if there was a strategy that you could use that's not too complicated that would help you save money at the supermarket? And it turns out there is. This is according to Terry Galt of thegrocerygame.com. You see, almost every item in the supermarket goes on sale at some point during a 12-week cycle. In other words,

just about everything in your pantry or your refrigerator has gone on sale in the past 12 weeks and will do so again in the next 12 weeks. So if you figure out and understand the cycle and then start buying things when they're on sale rather than when you run out of them, you'll save a lot of money. There's always some cut of meat or chicken on sale every week and it's usually pictured on the front of that newspaper circular that's right by the front door of the store. So buy the meat that's on sale and then buy some for the freezer and you'll never buy meat at full price again.

When items go on sale at the supermarket, the savings are usually substantial, close to 50% off on some things. So using this strategy of buying on sale is typically well worth your time. You just have to figure out what the cycle is. And that is something you should know. Whenever you talk to people, at home or at work or in social situations, the words you choose to use make a huge difference. A difference in how people perceive you, in how influential or persuasive you are, how people remember you.

And that may seem pretty obvious that the words you use matter, but there's more to that statement than you may realize. But you're about to realize it as you listen to my guest, Jonah Berger. Jonah is a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He's written some really interesting books, and his latest is called Magic Words, What to Say to Get Your Way. Hi, Jonah. So I can imagine people hearing this and thinking, well, this is really about manipulation and trickery or clever little sales tactics to maneuver people in a way you want them. But this is clearly not that. So let's start with an example. You say, and I've done this many times with my two sons, you say that telling a kid that he or she is really smart is not a good idea. And I think this is a good example of what you're talking about. So let's start with this example. Why in the world would I not want to tell my son how smart he is? Yeah, well, taking a step back, I think there's a difference between traits and states. And what son how smart he is? Yeah, well, taking a step back, I think

there's a difference between traits and states. And what do I mean by that? Well, a trait is something that's who you are. It's a fixed thing. A state is something that happened, right? A state is something that occurred. And so when we tell kids they're smart, that sounds like a trait. That sounds like who they are. And while that's good in some ways, it's good they're smart, that sounds like a trait. That sounds like who they are. And while that's good in some ways, it's good to be smart, it suggests you don't have to work very hard, right? Because it's who you are. And so you didn't get here because of working hard.

You got here because you're just a smart person and you're always going to be a smart person. And so that's just great for you. The challenge there is when we say something like that, it can often people's future efforts right they think okay like I don't need to work hard I've already got it and so some very nice research shows that you know when we want to encourage people some encourage them in a positive way sometimes it's better as parents or as as loved ones or as colleagues to to talk about states rather than than, right? I can tell you worked really hard on this. I'm so proud of the effort you put in, right? Recognizing that

they did a good thing, but recognizing that the way they got there wasn't just who they are, it's the work they put in, which is going to encourage them to put the work in next time, rather than just assuming that it'll happen because I'm just great as is you say the word because is very important that human beings like to hear what the reason is behind any requests that you make and so when you're talking to people you the word because becomes very important so explain what you mean yeah there's a nice study that was done many years ago now in New York City where they went up to people at a library and they said, hey, I know you're in the middle of making copies. The person was in the middle of making copies and they basically interrupted and say, let me cut in line.

Usually I would have to wait, but I need to go ahead of you to make copies. And not surprisingly, most people said no, but they were interested in what would lead people to say yes. And so some people went up there and they said, hey, you know, I need, I'd like to make some copies. And most people said, no. A different group of people approached them and said, hey, you know, I'd like to make some copies because, and then listed a reason. And they found that the people who said because, others were about 50% more likely to go ahead and say yes, to let this person cut ahead of them in line. And you might say,

well, yeah, but that's because they gave a really good reason, right? I mean, because here's a really good reason. But there was a third set of people, a third set of people were approached, and they were said, hey, you know, can I cut in line to make copies? Because, and then they gave a really terrible reason, because I need to make copies. Now, that's obvious, right? If I'm asking you to cut in line to make copies, it's clear that I need to make copies. Yet, even in that situation where the reason wasn't a very good reason, people are still around 50% more likely to say yes. And so it's not the reason itself. Yes, the reason itself matters. But even regardless of the reason, the word because

can be quite impactful. So in other words, whenever you have a request to make explaining why you're making it, what the reason for it is makes really makes all the difference. Basically, yes, because encourages us to give the reason. Hopefully it's a good reason, but even if it's not a great reason, having a reason is better than, than not having a reason, right? Understanding what, what right? Understanding why someone wants something is usually a better way to create influence. When you did the research for this, what are some of the words, some of the phrases, whatever that came up that perhaps even surprised you that like, wow, this is really powerful and I had no idea? Yeah. So I talk about six types of language

and to help people remember them, I put them in a framework. The E is the language of emotion. The A is the language of agency and identity. One of the Cs is the language of confidence. And the other is the language of concreteness. And I'll pick just one example from the language of agency and identity to talk about. And there was a study that was done many years ago where they're trying to get people to help. It's done in the classroom. People need to clean up. And so some of the students are asked to help and other students are asked to be a helper. Now, the difference between help and helper is infinitesimally small, right? It's two letters different. It's not even a different word, really. It's an addition of two letters to the end of that word. Yet people who are asked to be a helper, right, rather than just help, we're 30% more

likely to help clean up. And it's not just kids in classrooms. A more recent study done with adults and voting found that rather than asking people to vote, asking people to be a voter led them to about 15% more likely to go ahead and vote. And there, it's not even two letters, it's one letter, vote to voter is just a single letter. And so what's the deal, right? Why is helper more motivating than help? Why is voter more likely to motivate folks than vote? And the answer is we all want to see ourselves positively. We all want to see ourselves as smart and efficacious and attractive and athletic and all these different things. And so we engage in actions that help us feel that way about

ourselves, right? If I want to feel I'm athletic, I got to go for a run once in a while. If I want to feel like a nice person, I need to do nice things once in a while. And so we're also busy. And so we don't have time to do everything. But by turning actions into identities, we're more likely to take those actions as a way to claim the desired identity. If someone asks me to help, yeah, I know I should help, but maybe I don't want to or I'm busy. But if they ask me to be a helper, well, if I'm a kid, now helping is an opportunity to show everybody I'm a helper, I'm more likely to do it. Similarly, in a voting context, I know I should vote, but maybe it's difficult to get to

the polls. But if voting is an opportunity to see myself and show other people that I am a voter, well, now I'm more likely to do it. And so by turning actions into identities, we can make people more likely to take those actions. The same thing is actually true on the opposite side for negative things, right? There it works the same way but in the opposite direction. Losing is bad. Being a loser is even worse, right?

Cheating on a test is bad, but being a cheater is even worse. And so research shows that one way to get students to cheat less is just by telling them, well, cheating would make them a cheater. There's the old littering campaign that says, don't be a litterbug, same idea, right? If we want people to do something or not to do something, don't just think about actions, think about identities.

We can use those identities to motivate people to behave in the way we're hoping. I love how just a little shift in language, a little shift in a word can make such a big difference because we don't really weigh that when we're talking or even when we're writing, whether we should say it this way or that way, because it seems like it doesn't really matter. And it really does matter. And talk about the difference between fix and solve. I'll stick with one thing you just said, though, that stuck out at me, you know, think about if there are two people, one person says, Hey, I run, or I run sometimes. And the other one says, I am a runner, right? I go running versus I am a runner. Well, if someone says they are a runner,

you probably say, well, they run more often, right? A coffee, someone who drinks coffee, yeah, they like coffee. If someone's a coffee drinker, they must drink coffee a lot. And so we can even use this with ourselves, right? By describing ourselves as identities rather than actions, it makes it seem more like a fixed thing. I think YouTube's

done a great job of calling their audience rather than saying, oh, these are people that create content. They're creators. Well, creators, it seems like a full-time job. If I want to show people I'm creative, don't just say I am creative. I am a creator. And so we can even use this on resumes and other places to shape how we're perceived. I'm speaking with Jonah Berger. He is a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and he's author of the book Magic Words, What to Say to Get Your Way. 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.

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Okay, so Jonah, now talk about the words fix and solve. So we did a study a few years ago where we looked at the language of customer service. And customer service is you got a tough job, right? You got people calling all the time. They're often unhappy. And you've got to figure out how to make them happy in a short period of time. And it's challenging to do, in part because you only have so much control over your situation. And so what you'd really like to do is show people that you

listened and that you care, but how can you do that? And notice that's a problem that doesn't just happen with customer service folks, right? If I'm a leader, I want to show my team that I listen and I care. If I'm a spouse, I want to show my partner that I listened and I care. And so how can we show listening, right? We often think about listening as something that we do. How can we show it? And so we did an analysis of hundreds of customer service calls. So we worked with a big airline

and we worked with a big online retailer and we analyzed the language that their customer representatives used as well as how satisfied people were at the end of those calls and whether people came back to buy something from that company. And we found something pretty powerful. So controlling for the issue people called about and whether that issue was solved and a variety of other things,

we found that using concrete language made customers more satisfied and made them buy more in the future. And what do I mean by concrete language? Well, if someone calls customer service, the representative could say, oh, I can help you with that. Or they could say, I can see if I can find a direct flight from Milwaukee to Kentucky, right? In a retail setting, someone can say, oh, yeah, I'll go look for that. Or I'll go try to find you a t-shirt in gray. Using concrete language is language that's touchable, feelable, perceivable through our senses. A table is really concrete. Strategy is pretty abstract, right? A word like soon is somewhat abstract. A word like tomorrow

is really concrete, right? And so if I say, hey, we'll process your refund soon, well, it sounds a little bit concrete. If I say, hey, your refund will be there tomorrow, it's a lot more concrete. And what we find is that concrete language both improves customer satisfaction and makes people more likely to return to the retailer. And the reason why is that concrete language shows listening, right? Because if someone says something, you say, I can help with that. It's not clear to them whether you heard what they said and care about what they said, or it's just a phrase you use all the time, right? When we call customer service, you know, after we sat on hold for 15 minutes,

they jump on and very nicely say, oh, we care about your business. And then leave you to be on customer hold for another 20 minutes. And so just because someone says that they care doesn't mean that they do, but concrete language shows caring, right? Because for somebody to be able to use that language, they have to have heard what you said, understood what you said, and be able to show you that they listen. And that's really key, right? Listening is not just about the actual act of hearing or understanding. It's also to get the benefit of it. It's about showing other people and concrete languages is really useful in showing others.

It also seems to matter too, although the emphasis is on the words here, but how you say it, you know, listening to you, for example, you could talk about anything and the way you talk, you speak with confidence, you know what you're saying, you say it very well, you don't um and ah your way and you're not searching for answers. That kind of delivery makes a big difference in whether I believe you or not. Thank you very much for the kind words. I mean, I'm not one of those people that everybody goes, oh, they're so charismatic. Or, you know, we all have folks in our own lives where we, we think they're amazing communicators. When they talk, everybody listens. But one question is,

well, why, why do people listen when, when that person talks, right? What does that person do that, that makes people listen? And so I talk a little bit about the language of Donald Trump, and I don't want to get into politics here. But whether you like Trump or whether you hate him, you can't deny that he's been amazingly effective at selling his ideas, right? He's gotten a lot of people to listen. He's been able to persuade a large swath of the American public about what he wants them to think about. And so something, whether you like him or not, he's doing is working. What is it? And so if you look at his language, it's actually pretty

interesting, right? Consider, I think he gave a speech, for example, when he was announcing his presidential run a number of years ago, where he said something like, you know, look, America's not what it used to be. You know, I'm going to build a great wall and I'm going to build it very expensively. And we don't win anymore with trade deals with China, for example, we're not winning. And I beat China all the time, all the time. And I'll do it here as well. And some people listened to that speech and they said, it's empty, it's vacuous, it's overly simplistic. And yet a a year later he was elected president and so again even if he didn't like that speech something he's doing is working what is it and it turns out if you look at his language he's doing the same

thing that a lot of great salespeople do that a lot of leaders like a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk that gets a lot of attention, even gurus do, which is he does one particular thing. He speaks with a great deal of confidence. And what do I mean by confidence or certainty, right? The language of certainty. Certain words indicate certainty. This is absolutely the case. It's definitely true. Everyone agrees. The answer is obvious. I'm sure this will happen, right? All of those indicate a great degree of certainty. And not surprisingly, certainty is quite persuasive. There's been research, for example, that looks at financial advisors. So they give people two potential

financial advisors. They say, hey, which advisor would you want to work with? And they get some sense of what those advisors talk about. And this research finds that people are more likely to want to work with an advisor that seems more certain, even when that certainty doesn't lead to better performance. And even in some cases where that certainty is overconfident, right? They're so sure of things, even though they end up being wrong. And why do people like others that seem certain? Well, very simply, if they're so clear about the right answer, it's hard not to believe that they're right because they seem so sure of it themselves. And so certainty is a great way to persuade others. Notice that's not what most of us do most of the time, right?

Most of us, whether our personal or professional lives, we speak with a great deal of uncertainty. I am as guilty of this as anybody. When I work with consulting clients and someone says, hey, what do you think of this strategy? I might say, well, I think it's a good idea. Seems like it might work. It's probably the best course of action. Where it's like seems, probably, might, could, I think, in my opinion, are all hedges. They all indicate uncertainty. And not surprisingly,

that reduces persuasion because people are sitting there going, well, if it's not even clear you're certain about what you're saying, why should I take your advice? And so I'm not saying never hedge. There are certainly cases where we may want to communicate uncertainty. But at least in many situations, particularly when we're trying to persuade others, don't just hedge because it's inconvenient. Don't just hedge because it's a verbal tick that we do. Hedge because we're doing it on purpose. And if not, ditch the hedges, right? Ditching the hedges will make you seem more confident, seem more certain, which will make other people more likely to take your advice. Or when we have to hedge, when we want to communicate uncertainty, own that uncertainty,

right? Rather than saying, yeah, you know, I'm not sure if this strategy will work. Say, hey, I think this strategy is really effective, but for it to work, these three things need to happen, right? You're not suggesting that it's necessarily going to work. You're suggesting it's going to work as long as these three things happen. And so by calling out where that uncertainty is, it not only helps your team and others figure out what they need to do, but it also makes it clear that you are very certain about

certain parts of this, which makes people more likely to listen. Yeah, I come across this often when I interview people for the podcast here and people will equivocate. They don't want to say something that might later not be true or that somebody might fact-check or something so you know they'll start an answer with something like well there may be cases where this isn't true but you know you just suck the life out of your own answer yeah yeah and in a better way right is to say in you know in

situations like this this happens right you're not talking about when it doesn't happen. You're focused on when it does happen. And so I think even when you want to look like you're the expert so you don't ask other people. You know everything. But asking, as you point out, asking can make you look smarter. So explain how that works. I think when we're stuck on a tough problem, and this happens to me a lot, you're working on something, you're trying to figure out the answer, you need help. And we think about asking for advice, but we often don't do it, right? For a few reasons. One, we're worried the person will be busy. Two, we're worried that even if they're not busy, they won't be able to help us. But most detrimental, we're worried it'll make us look bad. If we ask for advice, it'll make us look like we don't know what we're doing, and so people will think worse of us. But some very nice research

shows actually the exact opposite is true. They had people have various social interactions. Some people asked for advice, some didn't. And they found that people were perceived more favorably when they asked for advice, not less. They were seen as smarter and more competent. And the reason is that people are egocentric, right? We all think we give good advice. We all think our advice is great. And so when someone asks us for our advice, we go, wow, this person was smart enough to ask me for my advice. They must be pretty smart, smart too. And so let's ask for advice a little bit more. Not only will it give us information that we need and help us out in that capacity, but it will also help us be perceived more favorably as well. Lastly, talk about the words could and should and why it's important to talk about those words.

You know, we're talking a little bit about solving problems. We often think about what we should do and should is a good, a good way to think about it, but a subtle shift in the way we describe that problem solving approach can, can help us out a lot. Rather than thinking about what we should do, if we think about what we could do instead, research finds we're much more likely to reach a good creative solution. The reason why is that should is sort of restricting. We think about what we should do, it focuses on the only one right answer and we've got to figure out what it is.

If instead I think about what I could do, it gives me a much broader vantage point. I'm thinking about the different possibilities and what might be out there. Even if I don't pursue all those possibilities in the end, by thinking in coulds rather than shoulds will help us get there. Well, what makes this so interesting is it's an important topic, but it's just not one we think about. We don't think specifically, you know, should I use could or should? Should I say help or helper? And it clearly makes a difference. Jonah Berger has been my guest. He's a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania,

and his latest book is called Magic Words, What to Say to Get Your Way. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming on, Jonah. No problem. Thanks so much for having me. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com.

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Everyone gets headaches from time to time. But why? What causes them? Why do some people seem to get a lot of headaches and others of us hardly get headaches at all. What's the difference between a plain old headache and a sinus headache or a migraine headache? And should we be concerned when we get a headache? Well, here to answer all your headache-related questions is Professor Amanda Ellison. She's a physiologist and neuroscientist at Durham University and author of the book, Splitting, The Inside Story on Headaches. Hi, Amanda. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, Mike. It's lovely to be here.

So when I get a headache, what is it that's hurting and why is it hurting? It's really interesting, actually, because one of the things that we know about headache is that most headaches, they're all the same. The pain comes from exactly the same thing. It comes from a widening of the blood vessels in our heads. And that means that our little pain receptors in those blood vessels start firing off signals to our brain because we don't want them to burst because they're in our head. And what it really wants to do is just warn us that there's something not quite right.

Our blood vessels are dilated, they're widened, trying to bring more blood to an area of the brain perhaps that needs it. It's overstressed, for example. And then that causes us pain. It's just a signal that comes from the blood vessels in our head. And that is something that actually we interpret as pain. And often for a typical headache, that pain kind of comes and goes. It may be a signal, but if you ignore it long enough, it'll just go away. And it really does depend on what kind of headache that you have. And it's really important to understand what kind of headache that you have, because you would treat it differently depending on what kind of headache it is. So it's once you have an understanding of that, then you can treat it appropriately. So you know that maybe it's because of your posture, for example. And if you just sat more correctly,

that less stress was on your head and neck, that that pain would go away. Maybe you might want to pop a painkiller or two, or maybe you want to drink more, for example, and I'm talking about water and nice hydrating liquids like that. But, you know, knowing what to do is actually the most important thing. When people talk about the typical headache, what I would refer to as a tension headache, I don't know if that's an accurate description, but it's just the headache that people, probably everyone on the planet has gotten and it comes and it goes. That's a pretty common and probably not especially dangerous kind of headache. Absolutely. Most headaches are not particularly dangerous, but always if you do wake up with a headache

or it's the worst headache that you've ever experienced in your life, you're really not prone to headaches and you start getting them. that's the time to see your health professional but the tension headache is pretty ubiquitous everybody's had one at some time or another and you're right it's it's a really good description it it is caused by tension or stress we sometimes call it stress headache now the interesting thing about this is that it can have bodily causes. So it can be born out of something like your posture, for example, or maybe an injury in your head or your neck area. And it means that you're holding yourself in a very stressed way. And it's causing your muscles to act in a way that they're not used to.

It's bringing a lot of blood to the area, a lot of vasodilation, lots and lots of healing and immune responses to this that causes even more vasodilation. And this is all perceived by your brain as being pain. Now, the interesting thing also is, is that we can have emotional causes for stress headaches. But your brain, Mike, it doesn't care whether it's caused by tension in your body or stress in your mind. It interprets it all the same. It's still just the same kind of headache. And you mount the same kind of healing response from your brain to both of those. And what's really interesting with the tension headache is that if it's caused by some kind of emotional stress, the effect of this is for you to hold your body in a very tense way. And then that feeds back up to your brain and that's interpreted as

tension type headache as well. Whereas if your body is tense because your posture is poor or you have an injury there, that will feed back again as a tension type headache, but you will actually feel stressed, emotionally stressed because of that, because it's the same pathways inside of your brain. So they're pretty coincident in and of themselves. And it's really really interesting and how it is that we might deal with that so if i'm worried about something i'm stressed out about something is it that because of that i'm doing i'm holding my body or i'm tensing up or i'm i'm holding myself in a way that that physical act of doing that is what causes the headache? Or could I be physically very relaxed, but just the worry is causing the headache? Yeah, it can be both of those things. Usually as complex human beings, it's a bit of everything really. And there's a whole other dimension as well, which

is the behavioral dimension. So if you're feeling stressed, you've got lots of deadlines and, or you've got a lot of worries and you think, oh, you know, I just need to take I just need to take a moment for myself. I just want to do something fun. Then generally what people do is maybe they might order a takeaway, for example. They might have a bottle of wine with a partner or a friend, or they might go out, they might go to a bar. And what's really interesting is that the kinds of choices that people make don't actually necessarily make the stress or tension, headache prevalence any better because you take decisions that may actually be quite dehydrating, for example.

If you have that takeout food, if you have a bottle of wine, if you're not drinking enough water, if you're not looking after yourself, then this can set up dehydration type headache from attention type headache, but they don't live in isolation of each other because oftentimes the choices that we make in order to head off, pardon the pun, attention or stress type headache actually can be detrimental to our head health as well. Is that dehydration headache? Is that what people typically experience when they're hung over? Yeah, it is. It is. I mean, the part of it is because you have your kidneys working 19 to the dozen to try to safely excrete all of this alcohol, the ethanol in it and everything, everything like that. And sometimes it happens that you've gone out for a nice meal, there's salts, there's spices. And again, that adds to the dehydration. And what your kidneys need to do is pull water from your

physiology. And your brain is made mostly of water. So it's sitting there like a nice little oasis saying, tap me. I've got lots and lots of water here for you to have. And it makes your brain shrink. And that is the main driver for dehydration headache for sure. What are the other kinds of headaches besides tension headaches and dehydration headaches? What are the other names? Well, we have sinus headache. A sinus headache is that headache that you get possibly in relation to an allergy, possibly at the tail end of a cold, for example. But what it feels like is a spade has hit you across the face,

and they're not very pleasant at all. They're caused by congestion in your sinuses. There are other more transient headaches. So ones that we might call brain freeze headache that we've all experienced when we drink or eat something that's really, really cold. And that comes from pain in your palate that your brain cannot distinguish between that and pain in your forehead, which is very interesting, particularly when you watch children experiencing it. But I suppose the big one that everybody knows about is migraine.

How many people suffer from migraine? Is it a big problem or not? It is and it isn't. I mean, what's really interesting about migraine is that it's misdiagnosed very often. So oftentimes people will say, oh, you know, I had a headache last week. It was a terrible, terrible migraine. And actually, it was just a bad headache. And so this is a real problem in headache-related research, because migraine is a very specific kind of headache, in contrast to other kinds of headaches that are very much driven by the

widening of blood vessels and that signal that goes to the brain that interprets that as pain. Migraine does that, but only at the very end, so only during the pain phase. Before you get to that pain phase, you've had two other phases, right? And that can have happened days in advance of you feeling that migraine headache pain. And so that makes the migraine episode totally different to all the other types of headaches that I talk about. So the one thing that we need to understand about that is what's actually going on in the migraine headache and what's been going on two days before you actually experience the pain stage. And there's loads of really interesting things that have been happening in the brain in advance of that pain stage. And so that's the really interesting thing about migraine. It's that it is actually a class by itself in terms of headaches, but often misdiagnosed

because people think that every bad headache is a migraine headache. And every bad headache isn't a migraine headache. And is every migraine headache really bad? Oftentimes, yes, actually. But there are people who do experience migraine in an entirely different way to everybody else in that they experience the sensory component of migraine, what we call the migraine aura, which precedes the pain phase. And a lot of people experience this as flashing lights or a strange sensation over part of their body or generalized clumsiness or something like that. Lots of people don't even notice it. So one really nice expression is it depends on how eloquent your brain is as to whether or not you actually notice this aura phase in the migraine. But the same thing is happening

in everybody's brain. Now, in certain people, it stops there, right? They are blessed. So these are the people who actually just experience that part of the migraine. And it never actually translates into a pain phase for them, which is really interesting. And we really need to understand that a little bit better than we do now. The point is, is that sometimes you can detect when a migraine is actually coming. And it's called the prodrome phase. But actually, migrainers or people who suffer from migraine are very bad at doing that. And if they did, there may be steps that they could take in order to stop the migraine attack

from progressing. By doing things like what? What's interesting, migraine is all about an imbalance of chemicals in your brain. And if you understand that, and if you know what that means for you, then you can actually start to rebalance them yourself. And we do this in a very automatic way. We don't actually even notice that we're doing it. People who suffer from migraines and are perhaps they're going to have a migraine attack, it's imminent, they might yawn a lot more. And that's trying to actually induce a behavior such that it rebalances

the neurotransmitters in the brain. And that might stop the migraine attack. Sometimes we get cravings. So we might get cravings for sweet things or for chocolate and again that's our brain's way of trying to rebalance those neurotransmitters and so if you feel a little bit more huggy for example you feel a little bit more needy before a migraine attack that you don't actually know is coming but that's actually your body's and your brain's way of trying to change your behavior such that you can spike these neurochemicals. Because when you hug, when you're intimate with somebody, when you're just having a nice bonding time, that changes the balance of serotonin, changes the balance of other really important neurochemicals as well. And they all have a part to play in the migraine attack. So there is the chance that actually through our behaviors, we are stopping migraine attacks from progressing.

So the advice is to listen to those clues? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. The more you know about how the migraine attack comes on, every migraine person will tell you that they must understand about their triggers. It's never one thing. It's its continuum. And what happens is you get to a threshold. And after that threshold, then you are in a danger zone for migraine attacks. But it won't ever be just one trigger. But the way to actually stop that from happening would be to try to engender some kind of balance

and make sure that you don't just take into account the things that you eat, perhaps, but also that you take into account the things that you do. Yeah. I remember a friend of mine who had migraines and light was a real problem. Yeah. Light is a real problem. And that's one of the signs that you may be succumbing to a migraine episode. But certainly once you're in the throes of a migraine episode, people tend to get very phobic of light. So it is called photophobia. There's reasons for that because you get overactivity in parts of the brain and the part of your brain that does vision is absolutely no different. And that area is totally overactive, totally overstimulated. And the only thing that you feel like you want to do is go into a dark room and

close your eyes and switch it all off. And that's your brain's way of just resetting all of its neurochemicals back to normal. So one of the things I've never really understood is about who these migraine sufferers are. Like, for example, I don't get very many headaches. I haven't had many headaches in my life. I've never had a migraine. So I assume I'm likely to never get a migraine. Do migraine sufferers have something in common? Is it a condition? Is it an illness? What makes migraine sufferers migraine sufferers? It's a really interesting point. And actually, there's been quite a lot of debate over why we actually even have migraine, because you would think that you can think about it in terms of like, why have we not selected this out of our genome? Why do we have this? There there are arguments that as there are with depression as to the value of migraine. So, again, we talked about the visual acuity there, but there is certainly a genetic link.

But but in a subset of migraine sufferers, they're called hemiplegic migraine sufferers, tends to be more familial in that respect. People have looked at this from a very correlative way. So saying, okay, in my population of patients, most of my migraine sufferers are under five foot three inches tall. And that's called correlation. You're putting together two and two and coming up with maybe three and a half. It doesn't necessarily mean that there's a causative role for that. Migraine is certainly more widespread in women. That's because there's definite hormonal driver to migraine. And that fluctuation of hormones that women have is a definite driver of the migraine experience, particularly through estrogen. So I've heard of this thing called kaleidoscope headaches, and I never really knew what it was.

And then I started having them. And then someone said, well, and it's not a headache. It doesn't feel like anything. It's just I see these things start to kaleidoscope in my field of vision for a few minutes, and then they go away. There's no pain. There's no other sensation. And what is that? That's really interesting because kaleidoscope headache is not always coincident with pain. So actually causing it a headache is a little bit, calling it a headache is a little bit of a misnomer. But actually, that's something that many people would identify as being part of the

migraine aura. So part of the migraine experience. So for you, Mike, it sounds like this might be an ocular type migraine aura. So part of the migraine experience. So for you, Mike, it sounds like this might be an ocular type migraine. What else about headaches do you think people either don't understand or you find particularly fascinating or would help people? I mean, most people, I guess, when they get a headache, they take a pain pill or go lie down and it goes away and life goes on. I think that what's interesting about how people react to headache is that people are very dismissive of them. And they're very dismissive of other people who have them as well. And I

don't think that they quite understand how pervasive they may be, particularly with sinus headaches, because they can have knock-on effects for other parts of your life. And they're quite exhausting. And that can be quite difficult, really, and stressful. I think the main thing about headache that people don't tend to realize is that headaches don't always happen in isolation. For example, lots of people with sinus type headache and chronic sinus type headache will actually be presenting with stress type headache symptoms because they're exhausted.

It's very stressful not being able to breathe. The body creates a stress type response, which is then interpreted as a stress type headache. And so these things are quite compounded often. And you do very much need to get to the bottom of why it is people are experiencing what it is that they're experiencing. Headache doesn't actually reach the curriculum of medical schools. And I think the reason and the same goes for pain, there's very little done on pain. And the reason why is because as far as our medical profession is concerned, there are pills

that you can take. There are solutions out there. So just do that and everything will be fine. But with headaches such as tension type headache, for example, that will just continue to persist and persist and persist. And so it's really important for us, our health and our well-being to say, look, we've got to get to the bottom of this and stop this from happening. And that is the way forward for headache research. Well, I must say the previous 20 minutes is the longest amount of time I think I've ever spent thinking about and talking about headaches. It's actually pretty interesting to hear. I've been talking to Professor Amanda Ellison. She's a physiologist and

neuroscientist at Durham University. And the name of her book is Splitting the Inside Story on Headaches. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you so much, Amanda. This was really interesting. Oh, that's brilliant. Thank you, Mike. A firm handshake indicates that you're confident and friendly and perhaps in pretty good health. A study found some links between how you shake hands and potential health risks. Researchers followed 2,500 people for a decade and determined that those with a firm handshake were at a significantly lower risk of stroke and dementia

than those whose handshakes were flimsy or had a limp grip. The author of the study says vascular problems in the brain manifest themselves in a variety of ways. A weak grip could be a sign that your overall cardiovascular health isn't in the best of shape. And that is something you should know. You know, the one thing that makes this podcast possible is our great advertisers, who really offer great products, unique products. We vet them. We know they're good.

And if what they're selling sounds interesting to you, I hope you'll. We vet them. We know they're good. And if what they're selling sounds interesting to you, I hope you'll do business with them. And that in turn supports this podcast. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? We're serving up for hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. In Don't Blame Me, we dive deep into listeners' questions, offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or

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