Stuff You Should Know - How Broken Bones Work

Episode Date: August 27, 2013

It's a pretty miserable thing to break a bone. There's the initial blinding pain, all of the medical procedures during a trip to the hospital and then, in the best case example, you have to wear a cast for four months. Beneath all of this misery, though, your body is carrying out some pretty amazing processes. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast audio adventure hour. That's a great subtitle. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever broken a bone? I have not. You better knock on wood right this instant. Yeah, I could say the same thing except I'm pretty certain that I've broken my small toe several times over the course of my life. Yeah, there's not a whole lot you can do about that though, right? No, I mean like I didn't go see a doctor or anything like that, which is why I'm not certain

I broke it, but I'm pretty certain just based on the amount of pain involved in it. But other than that, you know, I've never had like a sling or anything like that. I always got cuts. Oh yeah? Yeah, yeah, I was always stitched up in things, never broken bones. Oh yeah, stitches? Leg, foot, head, tongue, I almost bit my tongue off. I've never had stitches. Really? Yeah. Well, you've lived a relatively healthy life, my friend. I guess so. And I mean, it's not like I haven't been an adventure boy or anything like that. I've gotten in all sorts of wrecks, accidents. I've had a brick fall on my head. I put my arm through a storm window when I was a little baby.

I once was riding my awesome blue and yellow mag wheel BMX bike and went to go up a curb, but my brain misfired. And rather than pull up on the handlebars, I pressed down and went right over the handlebars hard. Yeah, I've done that on a mountain bike. I played football. I got hit in the head with the baseball playing baseball. It's not like I was like a milk toast or anything like that. You're unbreakable. Like Bruce Willis. I wouldn't say that just because I'm just too superstitious for that kind of thing, but I have not had stitches or a broken bone. But now I know all about broken bones and how they heal because they do heal and it's not just your saw bones that's healing them.

Like they heal on themselves and it turns out medical science is basically just there to assist a beautiful, elegant, natural process that's already in place. Yeah, I think I'm just amazed that the body's natural healing capabilities. I think it's really neat. I am too. Like you can regenerate your own tail, your vestigial tail if you make it out of the womb with one of those. If you lost your third nipple, it might just grow right back. You're superfluous third nipple. Yeah. So I guess, you know, I am a few years away from being more susceptible. Apparently men after 45 are more susceptible to breaking bones. And I don't know. I'm sorry, pre 45. Right. So I'm almost in the clear.

Yeah. And I suspect that that is due to them being more active. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's in men. If you're 45 or under, you're more susceptible to breaking a bone. And then women are more susceptible to breaking a bone after that age. Postmenopausal. Yeah, when they reach menopause. Yeah. And the most commonly broken bone is what? The wrist, right? Yeah. The radius bone of the wrist. I guess from all the tennis people play. I think my theory on that is, is that's how you, you know, it's a lot of that comes from trying to break your fall by putting your hand out. But that just happens a lot. It makes you wonder what bones we would break and how many more bones we break if we didn't have

wrist bones to break. Well, if you, or if you didn't try to break your fall, you just break your face over. I guess so. And then in the elderly age 75 or over, according to this article by Robert Lam, hip fractures are the most common. Yeah. And those are painful. Yeah, I'm sure that's like, yeah, you hear about that a lot. Very sad. Yeah. Like falling the bathtub, break the old hip. Sure. So there's different types of fractures that can take place, right? Like there's not, there's the simple fracture. Yeah. Which is the most like the one you're, if you're going to break a bone, this is the one you hope for. Yeah. But it is, and it may even be the most common. I don't know if what's the most common. It's just a clean,

a clean, simple break in one place only. Right. And there's not like a bunch of other trauma or like associated pain or well, there's probably a lot of pain. Yeah. But problems that come out of it's just like snap. And then there's a clean break. Yeah. That's a simple fracture. That's definitely not the only kind of fracture. No, the dreaded compound fracture, which I think strikes fear into the hearts of everybody is when your bone is poking through your skin. Yeah. Like Joe Thysman or the guy in the March Madness recently. I don't think I saw that one. Oh man, it is bad. Yeah. I can't, I have mirror neurons kicking so hard when that stuff happens. There's this, there's this animated gif of this, the footage of the guy, he just fell down wrong. And he fell

down right in front of his own bench. And there's like the reaction of like the guys on the bench just like, oh, they all look like they're about to faint because they're like two feet away from like one of the worst things you could possibly see in an alive human, you know. That's awful. Yeah. But those, that's a compound fraction. Those are kind of dangerous because they can lead to infection pretty easily. By the way, you know, Joe Thysman, I don't know if this is true. Supposedly his name was pronounced Thysman until college and he changed it to rhyme with Thysman in a push for the trophy. No way. I've heard that. I'm not sure. I need to look that up to verify it. That might be an urban legend. Could be. But I always call him Joe Thysman as

a joke. But either way, the compound fracture came out of his thigh, didn't it? I can't remember. I thought it was more like at the knee. It was gruesome though. I remember like seeing it live. I never saw it. Yeah. All right. So there's also the impacted fracture when one end of the fracture, one of the bone is driven into the other. That sounds pretty gnarly too. Yeah. That sounds really awful. A communuted fracture? That's when the bone shatters into fragments. That's probably that's pretty bad. Yeah. I'm sure that's quite problematic. And as we'll find out, you probably end up a tad bit shorter if you have one of those in like your tibia because you have to get rid of that stuff. Yeah. The bone fragments. There's the super cute green

stick fracture. Yeah. This one to me was like the same as imagining pulling back a fingernail, but then it retracting back. Yeah. This is among children. It's a type of fracture specific to children where the bone like bends and snaps, but it doesn't fully break. Yeah. It cracks, but then it's like a green twig. Imagine that. Like if you bend it, you can't really snap it into. Oh, that's why they call it that. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Green stick. That makes sense. The old timber toe. And then an evolution fracture is Robert describes it as a powerful muscle contraction and it wrenches bone and tendon forcing a fracture. That sounds pretty awful. Yeah. I looked this up. So basically what this is is your the muscles around your bone

in some instances in very unusual instances can contract so powerfully that it snaps the bone under what circumstance. So normally our muscles aren't powerful enough to snap bone because we have neurological control over the muscles. Apparently athletes can train beyond this point and can be at risk for an evolution fracture by pushing their muscle muscles so hard that like they can make them powerful enough to snap their own bones. And in a very strong high jump or jump, the tibia, the shin bone is particularly at risk for an evolution fracture among highly trained athletes. Man. So imagine jumping so hard. Yeah. These snap your own bones with your muscles. That's crazy. Well, we learned when you get shocked, you know, like our body has that reserve

like when you get shocked from and then blown across the room. That's actually not the power blowing you across the room. That's your muscles are so strong and capable of doing that under the right circumstance. Exactly. Like the potential's there, but we have a neurological filter that keeps us from doing that. And I looked that up too to see if there was like an association of evolution fractures and electrocutions. They couldn't find anything. But it seems intuitive, doesn't it? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And then finally, the pathological fracture is the most dastardly fractures. It's when the bones are weakened by disease and really break pretty easily. They're brittle like osteoporosis can lead to that unbreakable. But Sam Jackson's character.

Yes. Mr. What was his name? F. Mr. Brittle. Like that. I can't remember, but he was remember his bones broke very easily. That was the premise of that. At least it was a really great. It was a great movie. I really enjoyed it. Actually, I thought it was like his only good movie. He didn't like the sixth sense. I guess that was okay. That was a great movie. It's hard to remember, though, because he's sucked so much since then. I feel bad for that guy in my oh, he's got a great imagination. Yeah. But um, yeah, I guess it just, I don't know what the problem is. Because he has me. He's made some great movies at the village. That was a really good movie. I didn't care for it. Are you kidding me? Yeah, I didn't care for it. I thought that twist was amazing enough with the

twists with that guy. Oh, well, that's the whole thing. One trick pony. No, he's not. That's like calling Oh, Henry a one trick pony. There's twists like just having a twist. Alfred Hitchcock, master of the twist. Master of the twist. I have a few other bone facts just since we're talking about bones. We know, I think we've said it on our TV show even you're born with about 350 bones. And when you die, you have 206 because a lot of your bones fused together from when you're a little baby. Yeah. Um, 27 in the hand, 26 in the foot, 25 in the thorax, 24 in the vertebral crumb. The what? I just spaced out. Vertical column. Yeah, crumb. And only one in the throat. We have a bone in the throat. Apparently so. Where? You know, right there. You're touching

it. That's my Adam's apple by 20 years old. We've acquired 98% of our skeletal mass and our bone density peaks at 30 and then starts going downhill after that. Right, it does. But there's a lot of confusion out there, I assume that our skeleton stops growing. Yeah. And it does like we do reach a point where would you say 30 30 is where it peaks. So our skeleton has reached the, it's full size, but that doesn't mean it stops producing skeleton, new skeleton. Apparently every year a full 10% of our skeleton is totally regenerated. Yeah, which we'll get to that process. Okay. And then alcohol and smoking are no good for your bones. You lose density and osteopenia, which is sort of like a pre osteoporosis, I guess. And before I think, yeah, I think when I was a

smoker, I knew that like it was bad for bones. It's definitely bad for teeth. And I'm sure the two are associated because I'll bet it's bone loss that makes your teeth fall out from smoking. Totally is. And then I guess I've got some stuff on how to support your bones and good foods and stuff. But maybe we should do that at the end. Oh yeah. Happy ending. Okay. Yeah. So Chuck. Yes. Well, we know virtually everything there is to know about bones, but we don't know how they work yet. We're about to. Okay. Right. Yeah. So like I said, we regenerate about 10% of our skeleton every year. And not the same 10%. It's just this constant process called bone remodeling. Yeah, our bones aren't just like dead sticks that are flesh and muscle are wrapped around.

It's living matter just like the rest of your body. Right. And in addition to the support and structure for your body that the musculoskeletal system provides, it's also your skeleton is a source for storing minerals. Sure. Hard minerals. The marrow, there's two types of marrow. There's red marrow where we create blood cells. Yeah. Red blood cells. Yep. And then there's also yellow marrow where we store fat. Yeah. That just sounds gross. Fatty bones. Fatty yellow marrow in our bones. Sounds gross to me. Have you ever eaten bone marrow? I know. It's like the butter of the gods, but I have you ever tried it? No, I guess I should taste it. But yeah, you're going to taste it one day. Yeah, I will see to it. There's places that you can find bone marrow. Oh,

sure. And I urge you to go there. Yeah, you can get on your burger at a at a farm burger indicator. Oh, yeah, they do have marrow, don't they? Yeah, I think you actually ate one with marrow. I'm sure I did. Yeah. Yeah, I very rarely turned down marrow. It's on the menu. Yeah, because I mean, you can't find it everywhere. True. It's very tough to screw up marrow. Okay, well, that's good to know. Anyway, in my opinion, fatty bone marrow sounds awesome. In my oh, it does not. But I'll try. Did you pick that up at the Folk Festival? What? In my oh, I don't think so. Why? Because you've never said it before and you said it twice today. I don't think that was like the phrase that was sweeping the

road out. It was on a banner in the back behind back in my oh tour. Imo. Yeah, Imo. I thought you were saying in my oh, I was and just old and I don't know how these, but I like the variation. Okay. 2023 is already well underway, everybody. So don't wait any longer to level up your small business. And the way you can do that is by joining up with stamps.com. That's right, because with stamps.com, you're going to be able to print your own postage and shipping labels right there from your home or office or home office. And you know, it's ready to go in minutes. You can get back to running your business sooner than later. Yep, stamps.com is like the post office elevated. They have rates you literally can't find anywhere else,

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world for less. Let gate one handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European River Cruises. And right now through January 30th, use promo code heart 20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code heart 20 through January 30th. Visit gate one travel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gate the number one travel.com. Once again, use promo code heart 20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. Alright, so hold on. Hold on. I'm still, I haven't lost my train of thought yet. I've got it in reserve. Okay, marrow. Well, we're past the marrow. The point is the bone is a living structure, right? Yes, it is. The thing is, it can mineralize. It's the store of hard minerals. The bone can become a little too

hard. Yeah, because it needs to stay living as well as rigid. And so we do bone remodeling. So this process is basically a three step process, right? Yeah. So you've got the old bone that's become too hard, ossified is what it's called. And it's basically broken down by a type of bone cell called osteoclasts. Yeah, they go around and chomp it up. Right. And absorb it. This part of the process is called resorption. Yes. And I guess they leave behind new cells. And these new cells are, I think they attract something called osteoblasts, which are a different type of bone cell, and they generate new bone tissue. That's right. And that is bone remodeling. And then you have, you know, there's cartilage involved too. And that's where chondroblasts come in, form the

new cartilage. And between those three types of cells, you are regenerating your bone in every day, basically. Yes. Okay. So in the fact that we have this constantly going on, it's not that big of a deal to your bones to undertake this process of healing. Like this is, those are the reasons why chondroblasts, osteoblasts and osteoclasts are the reasons why we can regenerate new bone. Yeah. Once we break it. Yeah. And like from the moment you break your bone, it kind of starts to begin this process of healing itself. Yeah. Which is pretty great. And if you were like trapped in the woods and you could get it set sort of right, you're going to probably be okay. Like you don't need a doctor. Well, you need a doctor in many cases, but

before there were doctors, people still healed broken bones. Yeah. I mean, you the body does. Yeah. And depending on how, how well the whole thing went, you might be totally fine. Yeah. Or you might walk with a little hitch and you're getting it right. Yeah. If it's the middle ages, you never know. So when, when a bone breaks, there's the, your body undertakes this process of regeneration. There's three phases. That's right. Three phases. Right. And the first phase is the actual break. And remember, there's, there's blood vessels in your bones. Yeah. Surrounding the bone. So those break too. Yes. Which is, sounds bad, but it's kind of good. It is. The body says, I'm going to make lemons, eliminate out of the lemons that have just been dealt. Yeah. I'm

bleeding profusely, but I'm going to go ahead and take that blood, let it build up in the fissure, in the crack and create a clot. Yeah. Which helps. It's called a fracture hematoma. And that's the beginning of the healing process. It stabilizes everything, keeps it as lined up as possible and cuts off the flow of blood to those jagged edges there. Right. And since the jagged edges lose blood flow, they start to die. Yeah. And so the, the, I guess the parts of the fracture that are going to be the roughest just fall away and are reabsorbed. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's going to cause some swelling and inflammation. Oh yeah. Because it's like everything's hard at work. All these cells are hard at work

trying to, you know, get all the dead tissue out of there. And then little tiny blood vessels are going to start to grow again. They grow in the hematoma, in the clot. So that now all of a sudden there's a transport system to this area. That's right. And that takes place over about three or four days. This hematoma develops, right? That's right. So that'll develop into, you know, it gets tougher as it goes and it forms something called soft callus, which is sort of the beginning of, I liken it to like an internal cast almost. Right. Like the beginnings of it. And it gets harder and harder as this process goes on. Yeah. So you, and this actually replaces the clot, like the clot kind of turns into the soft callus. Right. And the soft callus is the result of

these things called fibroblasts, which start producing collagen. Yeah. And this collagen builds up. And that's what develops your soft callus. That's right. It's kind of like your skin is made of collagen. Yeah, it's a protein. Your bone's apparently made of collagen too, essentially. It's the base protein for bone and skin. Where would we be without collagen? We would just be a heaping mess on the floor. We'd be in zeroesville. Zeroesville. And then this, so you've got the soft callus. And then the soft callus is eventually replaced with something called the fibrocartiliginous callus. Yeah. Condroblasts are the cells that help produce that. And again, this is just a process of hardening and strengthening as the bones are lined up. Right. And all of it

started with that hematoma. Yeah. That clot. And it's become replaced. And then now it's getting a little harder. It's getting a little tougher. And I guess you have the fibrocartiliginous callus. Yeah. That remains. And rather than being replaced by the bone callus, the bone callus builds around it. Yeah. And that's the actual linking device that links the two pieces of the bone together. That's the bridge. Right. And those osteoblasts that are responsible for the bone remodeling that constantly goes on, they're the ones producing the bone callus. And the bone callus, if the soft callus is the beginning of that initial cast, this is like the cast that your body builds for your bone. And it covers the area and allows that bone

regeneration to take place in this completely protected area. Yeah. So the fibrocartilus callus is a few days, I'm sorry, a few weeks. And then the hard bone callus is three or four months. Right. That's why when you have a cast on, you have to have your cast for several months or at least a couple months usually. Long enough for it to stink. Yeah. And itch. Get ants inside. Yeah. I remember being a kid and being jealous of kids who got their cast signed and things because it was always, you know, the kid would show up, they get a lot of attention. And everyone would sign their cast and it was just a big thing. And I never broke my bone. And I was just like, eh, I want to break your bone. Do you remember the Simpsons where Bart has a

cast for the summer? Man, it is season two, three, four, something like that. It's one of the best ones ever because simultaneously, I think, um, I guess the Simpsons get a pool too. And everybody's having so much fun in the pool, but Bart can't get in and there's like a rear window, like a rear window thing going on with him. Oh, you're right. Cause Jimmy Stewart was in the wheelchair. Right. Yeah. But Millhouse comes over and Bart's like, Millhouse, my trusted friend, you won't leave me, will you? And he's signing Bart's cast. He's like, oh, I gotta go Bart. And they show his signature. It says Mill Pool. Anyway, that's the Simpsons episode. That's good. It's a good one. And when I was a kid too, they still had the,

early on they still had the plaster casts, you know, that were really easy to sign. And then they kind of, I don't even know what they're made of now, but it looks more like, like fibrous, you know, whatever. Like gauze. Yeah, like gauze. It's harder to sign though. Yeah. It's not like the old days. No, but don't they have like designs and colors and stuff? Oh, do they? So kids can like get funky with their casts. I'm sure they do actually. I've never seen it, but that makes total sense. Make broken bones fun, like band-aids and stuff. Right. All right. So we've got our bone callus. That is when the healing is really going on. That is the stable protection, the interior cast, as it is, or as it could be. Right. And

you could leave that alone. Yeah. And like you said, risk dying or having a limp or something like that. You could take a chance if you wanted. Right. But if medical science is anything, it's interventionist. So they come in and they say, we're going to help this process along as best as we can. Yeah. And a lot of times it's as simple as creating a cast, which basically forms that protective layer and keeps kids from doing stuff that's fun while their bone is reproducing itself. Yeah. They're going to diagnose you. They're going to immobilize it with that cast and make sure it's all in proper alignment. Maybe a splint, maybe a sling, maybe a brace, whatever it takes, depending on like where the break is, how bad it is, how old you are. And horrifically.

It's probably painful. Yeah. Because your bone, if it's not in alignment, when you go to see the doctor, they have to make sure that it is in alignment, which means that they're going to physically force it back into alignment, which means you're going to pass out from the pain if they don't give you something beforehand. Yeah. I've also heard, I should have looked this up, that if it's not healing right, they'll re-break it sometimes. Is that true? I imagine, yeah. I've heard that. It seems like I knew someone that had that happen. A surgical break? Yeah, I think so. I'll have to look it up. Or a medical break? I bet that's happened. You might need traction, which I never really knew

what traction was. I thought traction was just, hey, I need to keep my leg elevated for a period of time, but it's not just that. It's actually weights and ropes and pulleys, like pushing and pulling constantly to make sure it stays in alignment and maintains that alignment. Right. If you have a leg where the break is trying to go, the lower part is trying to go up and the upper part is trying to go down, you would have a pulley pulling on the lower part and the upper part pushing on the upper part, pulling each away so that it's constantly in alignment. That's got to be painful. I would imagine. I can't imagine traction is fun.

There is a kind of traction that bears your last name, Bryant traction. Oh, really? Yes. It's as cute as possible. It's for little kids only who've suffered femur or hip breaks. Oh, man. They're tiny little legs have to both be up in the air at a 90-degree angle of their pelvis. It's heartbreakingly, adorably sad to see a little kid in Bryant traction because they're all four. I've seen pictures because I looked up traction. If you want to see a really disturbing PDF that's not intended to be disturbing, it's just forthright medical photos. Go on to Lancastergeneralcollege.edu and look up traction in orthopedic care by a guy named Rothiker. It's just basically a how-to and different types of traction.

Traction's kind of become abandoned largely by the medical profession. It was kind of big in the 20th century and I think we've kind of outgrown it largely. But there are some old-timey, torturific-looking traction devices out there, like the head tongs. You know like an ice tong? They used to deliver like three Stooges delivered ice. They have those for your head to like hold your head in alignment with your spinal column for however long it needs to be if you break your back. It's just really kind of weird to see. But there's little kids in Bryant traction in that PDF. You know, I bet our friends, you know, for my brother and my brother and me, Justin McElroy, he and his wife now, Sydney, who's a doctor, have a new podcast salt called

Solbones. Oh yeah, I saw that. Yeah, it's really good. It's basically Sydney and Justin are both just fascinated by antiquated medical practices. Awesome. And that's like the entire podcast. And I guess you could probably get that on like Bullseye, right? Bullseye website? Yeah, or iTunes. It's really good. And they sweetly said that they were inspired by us and as far as delivering like educational slash funny podcast. That's very sweet. Yeah, so it's pretty cool. Solbones. Yeah. Okay. Surgery. Surgery. Oh, that's another thing. If you are in traction, there's two kinds of traction. There's skin traction, which is basically like they attach the ropes and the pulleys and stuff to using medical tape or like a boot or a sling or something.

Then there's skeletal traction where they go in and attach pins, rods, needles to your bone. Yeah, that's if pretty severe breaks require this. Usually you don't need surgery to repair a bone. But if you do, that means you're going to be getting like bolts and pins and things inserted to keep everything properly aligned. Yeah. And while you're in traction, your muscles are doing jack, which means they atrophy, which means you're going to have to go through rehab. Yeah, which is good. Like in rehab, you know, they specialize in just enough work to build up your muscle and cartilage and tendons again, but you still have to respect the break. So it's like, it's a very delicate line. They're walking here with what kind of rehab you can do. Sure.

So broken bones can lead to it's not always just as easy as your bone is broken. Let's heal it. There can like be complications. You can die. Yeah, you can from like a broken hip. Yes, sadly. As apparently one third of hip related, hip break related deaths are come from that hematoma, huh? Wow. That's sad. And I think probably what happens when you have that fracture hematoma in a hip, you're still moving around a little bit. So what that's called though is a pulmonary embolism. That's when that clot moves up and blocks like arteries to your lungs. Right. And that's where the death results from. Yeah. Obviously, if you have a compound fracture infection, it's pretty big risk. If you break ribs, they can puncture organs or

if they're not properly said or not healing right, they can squeeze out organs and lead to like tissue damage and things like that. Yes. That's no good. And then there's something called fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva or FOP. Right. It's a genetic condition with a life expectancy of about 40 years of age and basically took that bone remodeling process goes haywire. There's a genetic mutation to where any kind of trauma to your tissue triggers bone regeneration at the site. So like your muscle is turning into bone, your muscle, your skin, your fat. Those pictures, man, like it showed a skeleton, bear skeleton that had had this disease. Yeah. And it's like there's it's like skeleton plus. Right. What you're used to looking to plus a

lot more. Yeah. And it's a very sad condition. There's I think there's they believe only about 700 people in the world have FOP. And most of them are incorrectly diagnosed with things like cancer. Yeah. Because cancer can do all sorts of wacky stuff to bones as a secondary condition. Yeah. And so they get all sorts of unnecessary treatment like chemotherapy and things like that. Even without having cancer. Right. Wow. Even when it is correctly diagnosed, it's basically like parents are forced to choose like, okay, am I going to try to keep you alive as much as possible? Yeah, make you live in a bubble or am I going to say, you know, I want you to live your life and you can go out and get a bruise and inoculation. Yeah. Get punched in the arm and all of those

things, those sites are going to turn to bone. Wow. A bruise creates a bone there at the site. Unbelievable. Your joints lock up and then you you lose use of that that limb. Yeah, that's all the one guy interviewed was just like, you know, he can't walk around. He can't lay down comfortably. It just really just locks you up. Yeah. And it's a really terrible, horrific condition. Yeah. But now that they've discovered the gene mutation associated with it, they really feel like the next generation of FOP patients are going to have a lot better quality of life than the ones alive today. Oh, really? Yeah. And there's a girl in Petrie City who has it who's just kind of a plucky survivor. That's here in Georgia, by the way. Yeah. In

case people didn't know. How do you not know it's in Georgia? It's called Peachtree City. Very true. That's where everybody drives golf carts around. Oh, really? Yeah. You didn't know that? No. That's the home of Club Car, the golf cart company. Is it really? Yeah. And for some reason, like Peachtree City, I guess to celebrate Club Car built a bunch of like paths like all over the city. That's how you get around down there from what I understand. Well, that's neat. Yeah. So she has it in Peachtree City because it's like super, super rare, right? Yeah, like 700 people worldwide. How's she doing? She's doing okay. Like I said, she's plucky from what I understand that she was the centerpiece of the article on it that I read on ABC News

called Turn to Bone Rare Conditioned Lacks Victims and Second Skeleton. And it's pretty interesting. Well, I've seen the attitude of people that have things like this happen. Like that's the inspiration. Right. We had a, I don't know if you saw the email a guy wrote in yesterday that cut off four of his fingers with a table saw and had medical leeches used as part of the thing and like sending pictures. It was really gnarly. No, I missed that. But this guy was like smiling in the picture and he's like, you know what, a lot worse things can happen. He's like, they weren't able to reattach the fingers. I got a nub. I can still play bass guitar with and he's got this really, really rad artificial finger that he sent a picture of.

Yeah. Like a robotic finger. That's very cool. And again, just like the attitude, Emily and I always make jokes about the, like the living will and you know, like what do you want to do in case these situations? I'm like, if I break a few bones and I'm in traction, I was like, just go ahead and put me out. Is that right? I'm just the biggest complainer and worse like with that stuff. I need to work on my, my attitude in case of like bad situations like that. You should probably specify on record, put you out means like kill you or like give you a bunch of drugs. Oh, right. Because that could lead to a lot of disagreement later on.

I could lead to some good times. Right. That'll change your attitude. Got anything else? That's it, man. Oh, by the way, evil can evil did not break every bone in his body. That's, I look that up. That's not true. Really? No, he broke apparently 35 bones over the course of his career. That's not that much, which is, that's a lot. He also used to punch out like reporters he didn't like, apparently. And break bones in his hand doing so. I guess. McConaughey was going to play him in a biopic at one point. I thought that was pretty good casting. Who else? Yeah. Yeah. Biopic. Maybe Josh Lucas. What's wrong with biopic?

Biopic. That's, that's what it, that's by, we've had this conversation before. What? Whether it's biopic or biopic. Yeah. And what did we settle on? I say biopic. And I said biopic. Yeah. But I think I just said biopic. Maybe you. No, you said biopic. Oh, I did. Jerry, can we get a ruling? Jerry says, no, I wasn't paying attention. I got nothing else then. Okay. Well, that's a broken bones. That was a good one. Yeah, I think so. I never really knew. I mean, I knew they healed themselves, but it's a pretty fascinating stuff. Yeah. And if you want to learn more about it,

you can check out this article by Robert Lamb on howstuffworks.com. Just type in broken bones and it will bring it up. And since I said Robert Lamb, that means it's time for a message break. 2020 is already well underway, everybody. So don't wait any longer to level up your small business. And the way you can do that is by joining up with stamps.com. That's right. Because with stamps.com, you're going to be able to print your own postage and shipping labels right there from your home or office or home office. And you know, it's ready to go in minutes. You can get back to running your business

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Now how's about some listener mail Chuck? Yeah, this is from a female rugby player. So it probably fits with broken bones. I bet she's broken a bone. Sure. And I didn't know that ladies played rugby. So I was happy to learn this. Hey guys, I want to say first off that I think you'll are incredible. Love the podcast. Dig the show. Thoroughly enjoy all the fun newsletter emails I get from you to help break up the day at work. Oh yeah, we should tell people you can subscribe to our newsletter. Yeah. It's pretty awesome. It's just kind of like a rundown of stuff we've come up with that week. Articles, links to the podcast. Video. Good way to say in the loop. Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how you sign up for that though.

Really? Hold on. Actually, I do know where it is. Chuck, you can go to our Facebook page and sign up. I should know that. There's a link on the Facebook page for our newsletter. So just click that and add your information. And I believe there's a no spam guarantee. And of course, it's not a legally binding guarantee, but I think like there's no spam associated with it. Oh cool. Yeah. All right. Like all you get is the newsletter. Nice. Well, thank you, Jamie, for pointing that out. Thank you for enjoying the newsletter. Yeah. So she continues, I am writing to ask for a favor on something I know you guys hate to do, but I figure I have nothing to lose. I play for a women's rugby team in Chicago called the Chicago Sirens. Rugby is a newish sport for me, but I have to

say it's one of the most fun things I've done since moving here. Anyway, our team has been invited to play in the 2014 Safari 7s tournament in Nairobi, Kenya, which is an extreme privilege. The Safari 7s is Africa's premier rugby tournament and is open only to teams that receive formal invitations and draw crowds of over 20,000 people. Wow. We are currently the only U.S. team that's been invited to play in the 2014 tournament, which is awesome. Yeah. In addition, we are the first women's team outside of Africa to ever receive an invitation to play and it's really cool opportunity for us. That is an extreme privilege. Yeah. Okay. The only problem is guys, we are a self-funded team and we have a ton of fundraising to do in order to get ourselves there.

Did you think she was just bragging? No, I didn't. Would you guys be willing to mention our tour website on your Facebook page or on Twitter? For sure. Or better yet, on the podcast? For sure. So, you got it. She says, I know it's a total long shot, but this trip would be like a dream come true and a girl's got to try. Your Kenyan-bound fan, Jamie. So, Jamie, here's your plug. If you guys want to help support women's rugby and get them to Africa, basically participate. Team USA for this. Yeah, pretty much. You can go to sirens safari number seven s. So, it's sevens, but it's the number seven instead of spelling it out. Okay. So, s-i-r-e-n-s-s-a-f-a-r-i number seven s safari sevens dot webs dot com. So, once again, that is sirens safari sevens number seven dot webs

dot com. Man, they should have made that easier. No kidding. We earned that. So, that's, you know, the URL and boy, I hope you raise your funds. I'd be really neat to support the USA. Let's support women's rugby. Go help them, everybody. Yeah, donate a few shekels, as Mark Marin would say. That's very nice. Yeah. What do you quote, Marin? Sure. I like the word shekels. Yeah, that's a good one. Well, let's see. If you, as always, have a charity, a group that needs help, that we can try to rally everybody for, we're always out to hear that kind of thing, aren't we? Yeah, no promises, because we get a lot of them. But, you know, like she said, girls gotta try. We'll do what we can. And if you have a broken bone story, you might as well send it to us.

Why not? You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. Yes. You can join us on facebook.com and sign up for our newsletter at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcasts at discovery.com. And you can check out our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the all-new 2014 Toyota Corolla. For people who love food, there's no place on earth quite like Mississippi, where a melting pot of culinary talent blends the flavors of yesterday and today. Sweet, savory, spicy, and smoky flavors that'll satisfy your spirits wherever you choose to wander. Plan your next dining adventure at

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