Something You Should Know - When Doctors Get It Wrong & The Science of Kindness

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Ever fake a smile? We all do. What harm can it do? Well, it could do you some harm if you are the one doing the faking. Listen as I reveal the downside of faking a smile. https://www.tampabay.com/arch...ive/2011/02/22/study-finds-fake-smile-is-bad-for-business/ While modern medicine is responsible for many miraculous things, there are some blind spots – some blunders. For example, the skyrocketing rate of peanut allergies is primarily due to some bad medical science. Same with over prescribing of antibiotics, the reluctance to prescribe hormone replacement therapy for women – all bad science. And there’s more! You need to be aware of these errors and be armed with the information to protect yourself. Here to provide this alarming data is Dr. Marty Makary. He is Professor at Johns Hopkins and has been a visiting professor at 25 medical schools. He is also a member of the National Academy of Medicine and author of two bestselling books. His newest book, which is already a bestseller is called Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health  (https://amzn.to/4gqSjhP) Your mother probably told you to always be kind. While that is good advice, it appears that kindness has a more significant impact on you than you ever knew. It’s not just being kind either. Just witnessing kindness has a cascade of effects on you that you need to hear about. So come listen to my guest Dr. David Hamilton. He is the author of 11 books and his latest is called The Joy of Actually Giving a F*ck: How Kindness Can Cure Stress and Make You Happy (https://amzn.to/3TxKZHw) Why do we drink so much cow’s milk? Lots of animals produce milk but cow’s milk is clearly the preferred favorite. Listen as I reveal the amazingly practical reasons for the popularity of cow’s milk. https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/03/13/why-do-people-drink-cows-milk/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! INDEED:  Get a $75 SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING  Support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.  Indeed.com/SOMETHING.  Terms and conditions apply. SHOPIFY:  Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk . Go to SHOPIFY.com/sysk to grow your business – no matter what stage you’re in! DELL:  Dell Technologies and Intel are creating technology that loves ideas, expanding your business and evolving your passions! We push what technology can do, so great ideas can happen. Bring your ideas to life at https://Dell.com MINT MOBILE: Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at https://MintMobile.com/something! $45 upfront payment required (equivalent to $15/mo.).  New customers on first 3 month plan only. Additional taxes, fees, & restrictions apply. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 The search for truth never ends. Introducing June's Journey, a hidden object mobile game with a captivating story. Connect with friends, explore the roaring 20s, and enjoy thrilling activities and challenges while supporting environmental causes. After seven years, the adventure continues with our immersive travels feature. Explore distant cultures and engage in exciting experiences. There's always something new to discover. Are you ready?
Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, the next time you go to fake a smile, maybe you shouldn't. Then, the serious blunders of modern medicine, over-prescribing antibiotics, over-performing C-sections, and peanut allergies. The modern-day peanut allergy epidemic is real, but it's also a manufactured, man-made epidemic. And it stemmed from a recommendation in the year 2000 by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Also, why do we drink so much cow's milk? Lots of animals give
Starting point is 00:01:06 milk. Why a cow? And the wonderful things kindness does for you. Kindness relaxes nerves. It reduces blood pressure. In fact, kindness even impacts the genetic behavior of immune cells in our bloodstream. So really, kindness supports our mental and our physical health. All this today on Something You Should Know. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times,
Starting point is 00:01:52 relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today something you should know with mike carothers hi you know somebody asked me the other day what's your favorite episode of something you should know i actually get asked this quite often and i don't I don't have a favorite episode. I like to think they're all pretty good, but some of them really do stand out for me, and today's episode is one of those, so I hope you enjoy it. First up today, smiling. Think about how many times you fake smile during a day. I think we all do it. And you may have heard that if you force yourself to smile,
Starting point is 00:02:47 it will improve your mood. And that is true, but it has to be a real smile. Faking a smile can actually make things worse. A study from Michigan State University found that customer service workers who fake a smile throughout the day actually wind up in a worse mood and may be withdrawn and less productive. The fake smile effect was stronger for women than for men. So yes, smiling can improve your mood, but you really have to mean it. If you don't feel like
Starting point is 00:03:17 smiling, try conjuring up pleasant or funny thoughts that will make you smile for real. Most of us do have the ability to trigger a real genuine smile, and when we do, it does help. And that is something you should know. Modern medicine is wonderful, no doubt. The advances in medicine are truly extraordinary, but there are also some big problems and blunders. For example, have you ever wondered why there are so many people with peanut allergies today? Peanut allergies used to be rare. Now they're fairly common due to a blunder in medicine. Medicine got this so wrong. And the peanut allergy problem is just one example, and really just a symptom,
Starting point is 00:04:07 of a much bigger problem in medicine that is being addressed today by Dr. Marty McCary. He is a professor at Johns Hopkins and has been a visiting professor at 25 medical schools. He's a member of the National Academy of Medicine, author of two best-selling books, and his latest book is called Blind Spots, When Medicine Gets It Wrong and What It Means to Our Health. Hey Marty, welcome to Something You Should Know. Great to be with you, Mike. Thanks for having me. So let's back up a bit and if you would please explain the idea behind blind spots in medicine, and where this all comes from. I think in medicine, we are, unfortunately, have done a terrible thing to doctors. The medical establishment has inherited this system where we as physicians are told, what's really good is for you to specialize.
Starting point is 00:04:59 When you specialize, you just put your head down and you do one thing. And for me, it was removing pancreas cancer and doing pancreas surgery. And so patients come into the door with pancreatic cancer and we go to work and do our operations. And we have measured a doctor's performance by how often they do it or how good their throughput is or how well they bill in code. And when doctors stop and look around and say, hey, wait a minute, why has pancreatic cancer doubled in the last two years? We haven't given doctors the time or resources to look at the root causes, but there is good medical research on the root causes. We're seeing rates of. There are many explanations and ways to prevent
Starting point is 00:06:07 these growing chronic diseases, but we just don't talk about them. They have been in the blind spots of medicine. Did you say that pancreatic cancer has doubled in the last two years? Yeah. And what's unbelievable, I don't mean to make light of it, but my team at Johns Hopkins of surgeons and researchers from every specialty, we do more pancreatic cancer than any hospital in the country. And when I asked at our multidisciplinary conference, hey, does anyone know why pancreatic cancer has doubled in the last 20 years that we've been all working together? It's as if we never thought about it
Starting point is 00:06:45 because we are incentivized by the NIH grants. Pharma is driving a lot of the narrative and supporting a lot of the research. And at no point do we get time or energy or the resources to actually stop and ask, well, what's going on in the environment? Maybe we need to study the environmental exposures that cause cancer, not just the chemo to treat it. Maybe we need to talk about school lunch programs, not just putting every kid on Ozempic. And this is the new movement in medicine now. Do you know why? I mean, pancreatic cancer is the scariest one for me because it seems like you never find out about it until it's too late.
Starting point is 00:07:24 And the fact that the incidents have doubled scares the crap out of me. And it's not just pancreatic cancer. We're seeing more colon cancer in young people in their 30s and 40s. Breast cancer appears to be increasing. We're seeing more liver cancer. Liver cancer, one of the risk factors that we've talked about is the fatty replacement of the liver tissue from high refined carbohydrates in the diet. So that fatty liver, what we call steatohepatosis, is a well-known risk factor for liver cancer. We would never say, though, that liver cancer is a foodborne illness, but it is. It is one of the biggest
Starting point is 00:08:05 risk factors and when it parallels the rise in obesity rates. So we've got to educate people about ultra processed foods. These are foods that are highly engineered, that are stripped of the fiber and nutrients and are almost designed to be addictive. And what they do is they do two things. They move fat into storage. They increase general body inflammation, which is a known risk factor of colon cancer and many other types of cancer. And we also have a lot of heavy metal exposures and microplastics. So there are some things that are likely suspects. And then one study that just came out in JAMA Surgery, one of our top journals this year.
Starting point is 00:08:52 The rise in colon cancer seen in people under age 50 was associated with them having a C-section. Now, that may just be one of the many factors, but we know that C-sections result in a different microbiome, that is the bacterial lining of the gut. And because when a baby is born vaginally, the gut of a baby is seeded from the bacteria that normally live in the vaginal canal. In other words, a baby in utero has no bacteria in the gut. And the microbiome is formed from the seeding of passing through the birth canal and then augmented from bacteria from breast milk and skin. But when a baby is born by C-section, they're extracted from a sterile operative field. And what may see that baby's bacteria are bacteria that normally live in the hospital. So we know there's been a different microbiome in babies born by C-section. Same thing with antibiotics. They carpet bomb the microbiome and change the composition.
Starting point is 00:09:48 Antibiotics and C-sections save lives. They're necessary many times, but they're also massively overused. In one study, 60% of antibiotics are unnecessary. And in another study, 40% of C-sections are unnecessary. So people need to know the risk-benefit relationship so that they don't fall for the medical dogma that an antibiotic may not help, but it won't hurt you. In one Mayo Clinic study, they found kids who took an antibiotic in the first couple years of life had higher rates of asthma, celiac, learning disabilities, including attention deficit disorder,
Starting point is 00:10:23 and even obesity. But why are doctors over-prescribing antibiotics, do you think? I mean, doctors know what antibiotics work for and what they don't work for. So why prescribe it in a situation when they know it's not going to work? It's harder to have the conversation. I'm talking as a physician here. It's harder to have the conversation to say, talking as a physician here. It's harder to have the conversation to say, you know, there's nothing we can really do here, or there's nothing that we can offer that is worthwhile, in my opinion, at this time. That's a hard conversation. It's easier
Starting point is 00:10:57 to say, ah, you got an upper respiratory infection. Here's an antibiotic. You know, it may not help, but it won't hurt. And so telemedicine has boosted a lot of the antibiotic overprescribing. When you come in with an ear infection, sometimes doctors don't even look in the ear or even know what they're looking at to distinguish bacterial from viral otitis media. I want you to tell the peanut allergy story because I've always thought about this, that, you know, when I was a kid, I didn't even hear about peanut allergies. Maybe once or twice, but now peanut allergies are very common, and you know why.
Starting point is 00:11:37 The modern-day peanut allergy epidemic is real. People really suffer. But it's also, by and large, a manufactured man-made epidemic. And it stemmed from a recommendation in the year 2000 by the American Academy of Pediatric for parents to ensure that kids avoid all peanut butter and peanut products ages zero through three. The experts thought that based on their opinion, they could prevent future peanut allergies in kids by encouraging total abstinence in the first three years of life, but they got it perfectly backwards. They forgot about a basic principle called immune tolerance or oral tolerance. It had been known as the dirt theory
Starting point is 00:12:26 by people for generations. That is, when you're exposed to allergens in the first couple years of life when the body's immune system is learning, then a person is less likely to be sensitized or allergic to it later in life. It took, sadly, 15 years into this medical dogma for someone to actually do the simple study to randomize children to both peanut abstinence versus early peanut butter exposure, that is introducing a little bit at five or six months of age. And they found the kids who had early exposure of a little bit of peanut butter had dramatically lower rates of peanut allergies later in childhood, an eightfold difference. So they got it perfectly backwards. And it took 15 years for this research to surface.
Starting point is 00:13:18 But sadly, you didn't hear a big apology or a change of course from on high. They just kind of slowly changed the practice and recognized this new research. And sadly, to this day, one of the great modern scandals is that the WIC program does not cover peanut butter from this old medical dogma. It's important for kids at four, five, six months of age to be introduced a little bit of peanut butter, a little bit of allergens like milk, eggs. Even some pediatricians recommend that young kids be around cats and dogs. That's because of this concept of immune tolerance. The experts got it perfectly backwards. Okay, well, I have a question about
Starting point is 00:14:06 that I want to ask you in just a moment. I'm speaking with Dr. Marty McCary. He is a professor at Johns Hopkins and author of the book Blind Spots, When Medicine Gets It Wrong and What It Means to Our Health. Mama, look at me. Vroom, vroom. I'm going really fast. I just got my license. Can I borrow the car, please, Mom? Kids go from 0 to 18 in no time. You'll be relieved they have 24-7 roadside assistance with Intact Insurance. Mom,
Starting point is 00:14:33 can we go to Nana's house tomorrow? Go to Jack's place today. I'll just take the car. Don't wait up, okay? Kids go from 0 to 18 in no time, don't they? At Intact Insurance, we insure your car so you can enjoy the ride. Visit Intact.ca or talk to your broker. Conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Melissa & Doug.
Starting point is 00:14:52 Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and crafts for creative thinking, Melissa & 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.
Starting point is 00:15:14 So, Doctor, can't you just chalk this up like so many things like that? That was the prevailing wisdom then, and then somebody comes along and proves it wrong. But until then, people will leave it, and then it's proven wrong, and people don't believe it. I mean, that happens in medicine all the time. You know, before they put that recommendation out there, with such absolutism, and by the way, that is one of the worst things you can do in medicine, is if you just have a hunch or a gut feeling and you want someone to do something, if you put it out there with such absolutism, instead of just saying, hey, we don't know, this is just our opinion, then tremendous damage can be done. When we in medicine issue
Starting point is 00:16:00 recommendations based on good scientific studies, we shine as a profession. But when we issue broad health recommendations based on an opinion, we have a lousy track record. Igniting the opioid epidemic with the dogma that opioids were not addictive. Igniting the modern day obesity epidemic with the dogma that it was fat, not refined carbohydrates and ultra-processed foods that drive obesity. Do you point the finger at that recommendation about avoid fat in food and so eat carbohydrates as a big cause of obesity? Because it's also people point the finger at ultra-processed foods and they're so tasty and hard to stop eating. How big a piece of the pie do they get? So it is multifactorial. But if you look epidemiologically over time, as we started altering the microbiome with
Starting point is 00:16:56 antibiotics and as we moved the food supply from natural whole foods to processed foods and added sugar, and part of that was the demonization of fat. Then we saw obesity rates take off. And the medical culture has this sort of natural instinct to blame patients sometimes for their chronic diseases. It turns out we were giving the wrong information. The recommendation to avoid saturated fats or natural fats was perhaps the number one recommendation by doctors to the general public on health for about 60 years. People would come in a little overweight. We'd say exercise more and eat healthier. And by the way, we define eating healthier as avoiding natural fat. Well, the food industry not only moved to a high refined carbohydrate diet because fat
Starting point is 00:17:50 was now evil and the only way to preserve the flavor was to add carbohydrates, but also they engineered food to be more addictive. And they figured out through byproducts how to almost fool the public. I think they were laughing at the public because they were taking things like whole wheat add back about three to five nutrients, which were really chemicals disguised as nutrients, and then convince the public that this was enriched flour. is increasing your body's insulin level. And that is probably one of the root causes of so many chronic diseases. High insulin levels, or what we call insulin resistance, it is one of the precursors of diabetes. Well, when you hear about all these missteps, you know, peanut butter, antibiotics, it makes you wonder, like, what's the next one?
Starting point is 00:19:02 I think it's pesticides. Pesticides have estrogen-like binding properties. And by the way, many of these pesticides have been banned in other countries. Pesticides may account for why sperm counts are half of what they were just 50 years ago. Fertility is decreasing. The age of puberty in society has decreased now to a range of 10 to 13 years of age. It's still around 13 to 16 in other parts of the world. We have the earliest age of puberty of any developed country in the world. And it's not a surprise when we learn that the five plus billion gallons of pesticides we pour on crops is making its way into the food supply and affecting the hormones of young children. So there are these giant blind
Starting point is 00:19:56 spots in medicine, things we're not talking about that we should be talking about. And there's also hope in those blind spots. And in the past, we would only talk about these topics in our doctor's lounges and physician conferences. But a group of us are now going directly to the public because we've got to spend more time now talking about school lunch programs, food as medicine, and the toxins that we expose our children to because it makes no sense that half of our nation's children are overweight or obese. Nearly a quarter have high levels of insulin or prediabetes.
Starting point is 00:20:32 And in Japan, it's only 3%. It may not, it's, in my opinion, not, the problem is not that American children are worse or lazy. It's that we have been poisoning the food supply and we've only been taking a medication-based approach to research and illness. We have the most medicated population in the history of the world. We've got to stop and ask, what are the root causes of these chronic diseases? Since you have your antenna up so high and you're tuned into this. I'm curious, and therefore, what do you do different? Meaning, do you buy organic food instead? Do you take a probiotic for your
Starting point is 00:21:16 gut microbiome? How do you translate all this information into your life? I eat organic food. I encourage everybody to eat only organic food, especially when you're eating the peel or the surface of a fruit or vegetable. If it's the pulp, you know, say the banana or mango, and you're not eating the peel, then it's not as important. But organic is important. It's also important to understand that we need to get back to whole foods. If you look at where people are getting their calories today, 10 to 20% of the average American's calorie intake comes from seed oil derivatives. These very cheap government subsidized products like soybean and corn that is used in a very mechanical and chemical fashion to produce these seed oils they sound natural but they're not and so it's important to avoid the sunflower seed oil the canola oil, the soybean, corn oil, they are ingredients that sound natural,
Starting point is 00:22:29 but they do not appear in nature. And remember, the GI tract in your body is lined with an immune system in the wall of the GI tract because the gut is the front line of defense from allergens and exposures of things that the body will reject. So what oils do you use? Extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, oils, avocado oil. These are oils that don't denature at high temperatures, that are produced naturally, that are not chemically denatured. They're not heated at high temperatures in their production in a way that denatures them. So those are healthy oils I encourage people to switch to. Well, obviously you wrote a whole book about these blind spots in medicine.
Starting point is 00:23:21 So there's a lot more of them. But one more that you think is really important that we haven't talked about yet. One of the big blind spots in modern medicine has been the underuse of hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women. That is women taking estrogen or estrogen plus progesterone once their bodies stop producing it. And the benefits of replacing those hormones, what we call hormone replacement therapy, are tremendous. They not only alleviate the symptoms of menopause, that is the hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings, weight gain, and the myriad of other symptoms women can experience
Starting point is 00:24:01 for sometimes eight to 10 years after menopause, but it also has long-term health benefits. We believe it's because of the higher levels of nitric oxide that estrogen results in. That is, the nitric oxide keeps the blood vessels healthier, softer, and more dilated. And it may also have a direct impact on nerves because women who start estrogen after menopause have 50 to 60% less cognitive decline. They have less brain fog. And in one study, it reduced the risk of Alzheimer's by 35%. Women also have lower rates of heart attacks because the blood vessels are healthier, half the rate of fatal heart attacks in one study. And if a woman
Starting point is 00:24:53 falls or is in a car accident, they're far less likely to break a bone or need surgery because estrogen makes bones stronger. So there are tremendous health benefits to starting estrogen at the time of menopause. But sadly, most women are not offered this incredible therapy that helps them live longer and feel better because of a dogma that popped up 22 years ago in a press conference by a doctor from the National Institutes of Health, he declared to the world that hormone replacement therapy causes breast cancer. He didn't release the data of his study in that press conference. The media ran with the results.
Starting point is 00:25:40 Doctors assumed it was true. But when the study was actually published, deep in that study, there was no statistically significant increase in that study, there was no statistically significant increase in the rate of breast cancer in the hormone replacement therapy group compared to placebo. The results had been misrepresented. And I tracked down this gentleman for the book Blind Spots and interviewed him in retirement. and he acknowledged to me that there was no data to support an increase in breast cancer mortality. He just believed in his gut that it does increase breast cancer. So sadly, 50 million women have been denied this incredible therapy because of this dogma,
Starting point is 00:26:22 including my mother, who broke some bones recently after a fall. And I couldn't help but think if she would have been on this, had this press conference not demonized hormone replacement therapy, could it have been avoided? Well, so much of what you've said is really eye-opening, at least for me. I mean, I haven't heard a lot of this before. And you've done a great job of pointing out, as you say, the blind spots in medicine. I've been speaking with Dr. Marty McCary. He is a professor at Johns Hopkins. He has been a visiting professor at 25 medical schools, the author of a couple of bestselling books, and his new one is called Blind Spots,
Starting point is 00:27:02 When Medicine Gets It Wrong and What It Means to Our Health. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. I appreciate you coming on. Thanks, Marty. Thanks so much, Mike. I really appreciate it. 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.
Starting point is 00:27:39 This is an ad for better help. 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.
Starting point is 00:28:00 Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. How many times have you been told to be kind to others? We learn that from when we're kids. Be kind. Kindness matters. And while that makes perfectly good sense, there is actually some solid evidence that kindness really matters. Being kind has interesting benefits that you may not know about. And here to reveal those benefits is Dr. David Hamilton.
Starting point is 00:28:38 David is a former R&D scientist, the author of 11 books. His latest is called The Joy of Actually Giving a F, because we don't say the F word, How Kindness Can Cure Stress and Make You Happy. Hi, David. Welcome back. I know you were a guest here a while ago, and it's good to have you back. It is my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. So before we get into the details, just in broad strokes, how is it that kindness is good for you? In really, really broad terms, I suppose kindness relaxes nerves, it reduces blood pressure, it supports the immune system. In fact, kindness even impacts the genetic behavior of immune cells in our bloodstream. Another thing it does is it supports our mental health. It does that in
Starting point is 00:29:25 part by increasing the activity of positive emotion, happiness regions of the brain, at the same time decreasing the activity of stress regions of the brain. So it really kind of supports our mental and our physical health. And this is an odd question maybe, but it does that as compared to what? As compared to people who are unkind or just not kind, but not unkind? Is it that kindness is good or unkindness is bad or both? It's both actually. Kindness is good. Unkindness is bad. Just being normal, I suppose, without being kind is just sort of normal so you don't get the benefits of kind if you kindness if you're just going about your day without any you know attempt to make a you know to help someone for example it's when you actually
Starting point is 00:30:18 physically do something or even something mentally thinking kindly of people, that the positive benefits begin to arise. So those are some pretty good benefits that you mentioned. And when you say kindness, what does that mean? What does it mean to be kind or have people be kind to you or see someone be kind to someone else or what? Very, very broadly, it's just when you do something that you know is beneficial to another person. And it usually begins with empathy. You know, it usually begins from that place where you're aware that someone has a need, perhaps someone is suffering or just has any sort of need. So kindness usually begins from that space like I feel where you're at and so here I am now doing something to help you but but when it comes to benefits of kindness we get the benefits as the giver of the kindness but also as a receiver and get this even as the witness to it I mean even for example watching a video of kindness being demonstrated. I watch animal rescue videos nearly every day,
Starting point is 00:31:27 and you actually get some of the same benefits simply by watching kindness taking place, because the physiological effects boil down to what the experience of kindness is like. It's not so much the act itself. It's what the experience is like for you, how it feels that brings about the physical effects on the body. What's the formula? Like you have to be kind every day to see the benefits and then how much benefit do you see? Is it like life changing or is it you're a little bit better or like how?
Starting point is 00:32:03 Talk about the degrees of this yeah so it's a cumulative thing think about if you go to the gym and you begin to work out then initially you'll get a bit of a benefit because you'll feel you know physically stronger or faster or faster quite quickly but if you keep practicing it if you keep the practice up then the benefits are cumulative so over time you actually get stronger you get physically fitter faster or whatever is appropriate to the type of exercise you're doing so similarly with kindness of course you get a momentary you get a momentary benefit right away but the effects are actually cumulative, in fact some of the research
Starting point is 00:32:46 looking at even the slowing down of some aspects of the ageing process in a counter to stress way the benefits are cumulative over time so you couldn't possibly see much of the benefits of ageing if you just did a single
Starting point is 00:33:02 act of kindness, but if you made kindness a habit you know almost something that you do because it's who you are then you begin to see benefits accumulating over time so it would seem that there is different kinds of kindness like it there are plenty of people who are kind in their circle you know that but but then there are other people who seem to go further out and and are kind to other people it's it's he and does that matter or kindness is kindness ultimately for the individual kindness is kindness you know it doesn't matter who or what you're showing kindness to it when it comes to extending your circle of kindness, that's where it becomes more beneficial to society.
Starting point is 00:33:46 Because, of course, if I'm focusing on just being kind to the people close to me, that's great for them and it's great for my health. But it maybe wouldn't have as big an effect on my community, for example, or wider society as maybe me extending that kindness and that sympathy I might have for people a bit further afield. So the actual effect on you doesn't matter. Kindness is kindness regardless of who or what you show kindness to. But the impact on society is greater if you extend the kindness beyond your immediate circle. Well, how is this fairly new research beyond the fact that we've heard before about the Helper'ss and the 80s and there wasn't a great deal of the physiological sides of things until more or less recently I think when we develop better technology and we can look at the impact on you know your blood pressure your blood vessels what
Starting point is 00:35:00 actually happens in the brain so now that that we have more ability to really peer inside the body, and now because there is more focus on mental health than maybe there was 10 years ago, now you're beginning to see an increase in the amount of research that's been done around the practice of kindness, how it impacts the brain, how it impacts your heart, how it impacts your immune system, different aspects of the aging process, how it's even contagious. All of these things are a product of our interest, I suppose, and the development of newer technology. So it all sounds great, but is there any research that shows that kindness really has an impact on people's health and well-being? Let me give you an example. So researchers took patients who had hypertension,
Starting point is 00:35:47 who had been diagnosed with high blood pressure, and they gave them a small sum of money each week for three weeks. And they asked half of them to do something good with the money. In other words, to spend that money in a way that supports other people. The other half of the people were asked to spend the money on themselves. And what they found after the three weeks is those who'd spent the money on others had much lower blood pressure, both systolic and diastolic. And the strength of the effect was as high as diet, eating a healthy diet and taking regular exercise. Now, it doesn't eliminate other risk factors, but it certainly compensates in a similar way to the compensatory effect of exercise and diet I can imagine someone listening to this and thinking okay well you know
Starting point is 00:36:34 this sounds great but so what do I do different what what do I do what is kindness how much of it I mean where do you even start? And maybe I'm kind enough. I don't know. Yeah, I would say a lot of people are kind enough and a lot more kind, I think, even than we realize. One of the things that I really try to get across to people is you don't need to do something big that's noticeable for it to count. It's the everyday, ordinary, the little things, you know, the checking in on someone because maybe you're concerned for someone's health or maybe you just want to check in and see how someone's doing. It's those little words of
Starting point is 00:37:15 encouragement and support, the little things that we do every single day. I think these are the glue that keep society together. And I think these are the things that are more important than the big observable things. So really just try to do more of that. Try to do more of this. Just really care about each other, starting with the people that you interact with every day. There certainly are some people who just, you know, it seems more their nature to be kind. And there are other people who seem it's more their nature not to be so kind, to be more self-centered and whatnot. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:53 It seems like you either have it or you don't. And maybe you can do a little better. But if you're not predisposed to being a kind person, it seems like it's hard. I don't know. It is hard. There is a genetic component you know when for example for a start everyone has kind genes right we have genes that are related to our tendency to be kind and they're some of the oldest in the human genome like a hundred million years old when you have genes that are that old that tells you something very important that they are absolutely crucial
Starting point is 00:38:25 For this the survival and thriving of our species, but like any trait you have variations between us So some people are naturally very very kind and some people are naturally really really not really far more focused on just Themselves, I suppose but then you also Inside that you also, inside that, you also have the impact of life experience because some people who maybe have a natural tendency to be kind, they've had life experience that weighs very, very heavily.
Starting point is 00:38:56 And sometimes it can make a kind person less kind because life can be so tough. And I think we can all relate to that in our lives. And then you can have other people whose natural tendency isn't really to be kind, but then they could have an environment that's really encouraged the development of empathy. And through the development of empathy,
Starting point is 00:39:15 because of their life experience, they can become more kind. So there's so much leeway. But for anyone, the ability to be more kind is actually related to your tendency to be empath to to have empathy and empathy is something that can be learned by by actively practicing by actively putting ourselves in other people's shoes imagining what it's like from the perspective of other people who are having a rough time and And so by doing that, we actually develop empathy and kindness evolves naturally out of empathy
Starting point is 00:39:48 because empathy is I feel for you, meaning I share your pain, I'm with you in this moment. And empathy evolves into compassion, which is like empathy, but it's now I feel for you. So empathy is I feel with you and then compassion is I'm sharing your pain, but now I'm thinking, is there a way in which I feel with you and then compassion is I'm sharing your pain but now I'm thinking is there a way in which I could help you in some way and that evolves then into kindness
Starting point is 00:40:11 which is the putting into practice of helping you in some way. I use an analogy of empathy like a seed and it grows a little stem and the stem is compassion and then the stem blooms into the head of a flower and that's your act of kindness. So kindness can be learned through developing empathy for the needs and the suffering of other people. Can you be too kind? I think that's a matter of opinion. Personally, what I've heard, this person is too kind.
Starting point is 00:40:40 It's usually friends of people concerned that their friend or loved one is too kind. And I think you can be. There comes a point where you need to be aware that some people might take advantage of your kindness. And that's the point where I think that comes through personal experience. I think sometimes we get burned, we get the experience of someone taking advantage of our kindness. So I think as long as you be kind, but be aware that there might be times when someone takes advantage of your kindness,
Starting point is 00:41:13 then I think that's okay. But some people who get called too kind, they're just indiscriminately kind. I have a friend who passed away a few years ago who was often called too kind, but she said, I don't really care what people say. I'm just going to put it out there. But she did get taken advantage of a few times.
Starting point is 00:41:31 So I think it's a it's a personal call, whether you adapt and say, OK, I've been taken advantage of. So I'll just watch for those times and I'll hold back a little bit. But every other situation, I'm just going gonna be myself because that's who I am so where do you think is a good place to start if somebody's listening to this and thinking well you know you've talked about all these benefits and advantages to being kind I'd like to I'd like to get my share of those like what's a good starting point to up your level of kindness a good first step for a lot of people is volunteering. And there's lots of charities, there's lots of organisations
Starting point is 00:42:11 who do really fantastic work. And sometimes for some people, just finding out where can I volunteer, even if it's just a couple of hours a week, it dips your toes in the water, gets you that experience of I'm doing something here and it's helping other people. And then you start to realise, you start to notice yourself how valuable the thing that you're doing actually is for other people. And it's a great first step if you're not sure where to go. And another obviously first step is just try to be polite and kind in your community, which might be as simple as just saying, have a nice day to the person who's served you at the local shop or the supermarket. It might be as
Starting point is 00:42:53 simple as letting someone in front of you in traffic. It might be just waving them on with a smile rather than rushing to get to your to your deadline your destination and people honking the horn everyone you might just say okay maybe today i'm just gonna see what happens if in this 30 minute car journey i just let everyone in front of me and then you notice that people wave and smile back and all of a sudden you're getting that sort of feedback and you realize wow this is such a simple thing to do but i'm feeling good people smiling. So it's having an impact on them as well. And I think it's getting that little bit of feedback that makes it, that encourages you to actually keep going with the kindness. Does just writing a check to a charity count? It does count,
Starting point is 00:43:42 but you might not get some of the physiological benefits. I think the benefits can be stronger when you get that experience, when you actually see the smile on someone's face, or when you learn firsthand. It's great, absolutely, write a cheque for a charity, because that benefits the charity, it benefits the people. So absolutely, it counts as kindness. But if you're thinking of, if the question is related to does it benefit you, then maybe not quite as strongly as a face-to-face act of kindness. Some research found that if you learn exactly what the charity is doing and you learn about where your money is going it actually feels emotionally more satisfying than if you just write the check without any understanding or without any
Starting point is 00:44:33 knowledge of how the money is going to be spent so so it comes down to the experience that you have but all kindness benefits the person you're being kind to. So never stop doing what you're doing. But if it comes down, if you're looking at what effects on you as the giver, face-to-face interactions tend to have a stronger effect because you're having an actual physiological experience of being kind. So here's a situation I think a lot of people can relate to. And say you're walking down the street and there's a homeless person. And maybe they approach you, maybe they don't. You want to help out. And you think, well, is it kind to give them money because you don't know what's going to happen with that money?
Starting point is 00:45:18 Are you, by giving them money, just enabling them to stay homeless? Are they going to spend the money on drugs or alcohol so do you do it or do you not is it kind to give them money is it not and i think people struggle with that it's a difficult call but i i would always tend on the side of saying well i don't know for sure what they'll use the money for so i'm going to be kind anyway there was a time I was in on a trip in South America a few years ago and I went to give some money to a little girl who who was a she was missing I think one of you know she had I think she was missing part of one of her arms and my friend rapped me on the knuckles and said, don't do that because the gangs are actually, what they're doing is they're trying to exploit young kids and they're putting them on the streets
Starting point is 00:46:12 to ask for money. And then the gangs are taking all the money. And I thought, maybe there's some truth in that, but I don't know for sure. Maybe if I don't give the little girl money, I'm depriving her family of something. So at the end of the day, I ended up giving money give the little girl money, I'm depriving her family of something. So at the end of the day, I ended up giving money to the little girl. I thought maybe there's something what my friend said. So I gave a little bit less. It bothered him, actually, that I gave anything at all. But I thought I'm going to do that anyway, because I don't know. And one of my kind of guiding principles is just be kind because you never know.
Starting point is 00:46:46 And you never know what someone's dealing with. You never know what someone's gone through or going through that's brought them to how they're being right now. And you never know the backstory of the person that you're faced with in this moment. So I try best I can to err on the side of kindness. I'm sure some people can relate to this. I have found that in my life, sometimes kindness, helping other people can be very stressful, either because you're helping too many people, you're pulled in many different directions, you're trying to help someone, it's not going as well as you'd hoped. It can be very stressful and take a toll on you
Starting point is 00:47:22 trying to help someone else and I think these are the times when we need to turn it around and say what do I need to do right now to support my own mental health self kindness can just be a simple thing you know one of the things I do Mike because I find myself I'm strapped a lot and I noticed that if someone needs my time, I always find a slot in my diary. If it's someone I'm close to, one of my family members or friends, I'll push things around in my diary and I'll always find some time. And I thought, well, maybe an act of self-kindness for me would be writing in my diary, meeting with self. And what I'm doing here is I'm elevating my own mental health up to the same level as every other
Starting point is 00:48:07 meeting and it might only be a 15 minute meeting with self where I might just sit down and read a few pages of a book or do a meditation but it might also be you know it's not unknown for me just as an act of self-kindness to watch an episode of Star Trek in the middle of the day but I'm doing it if I feel i actually need to take a little time out so so kindness to the self can be just little simple things like that you know going for a walk it could even be doing something that that you know that you enjoy doing that supports your mental health but doing it on purpose yeah and i think these little things can be really valuable so your mother was was right. Your grandmother was right.
Starting point is 00:48:46 It's good to be kind. But it's not only good to be kind for the person you're kind to, but it's good for you to be kind. I've been talking with Dr. David Hamilton. He is the author of 11 books. And his latest is called The Joy of Actually Giving a F. How Kindness Can Cure Stress and Make You Happy. And if you'd like to read it, there is a link to it at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks for the explanation on kindness, David. Appreciate it.
Starting point is 00:49:16 Thanks very much, Mike. Have a lovely day. Have you ever wondered why it is we drink so much cow's milk compared to other kinds of milk? We seem to prefer it from a cow, but there's nothing about cow's milk that makes it any better for us than giraffe's milk or dolphin's milk. The fact is, it's just easier to get. Cows are docile and easy to manage, which gives them the monopoly on the milk industry. Sheep and goats are steady milk producers too, but they run around a lot, and they're much harder to wrangle than cows are.
Starting point is 00:49:54 In fact, reindeer are milked in some parts of the world, and clearly they're not very thrilled about it. It can take up to three people to hold the reindeer while it's being milked. And it's take up to three people to hold the reindeer while it's being milked. And it's also hard to compete with the sheer volume of milk produced by a cow. More than seven gallons per day on average compared to a measly half a gallon of milk from a goat. And that is something you should know. You know, it's okay by me if you post information about this podcast on your social media accounts. If you go to our Facebook account, you could grab one of our posts and share it with your following.
Starting point is 00:50:34 We'd appreciate it. It helps grow our audience, and that's what we're trying to do. 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? thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. dive deep into listeners' questions, offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you. Then switch gears with But Am I Wrong, which is for listeners who didn't take our advice and want to know if they are the villains in the situation. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events and present situations that we might even be wrong in our lives. Spoiler alert, we are actually quite literally never wrong. But wait, there's more.
Starting point is 00:51:27 Check out See You Next Tuesday, where we reveal the juicy results from our listener polls from But Am I Wrong? And don't miss Fisting Friday, where we catch up, chat about pop culture, TV, and movies. It's the perfect way to kick off your weekend. So if you're looking for a podcast that feels like a chat with your besties,
Starting point is 00:51:42 listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series
Starting point is 00:52:08 about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur
Starting point is 00:52:16 and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting
Starting point is 00:52:23 stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.