Stuff You Should Know - How MRI Works

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

At long last Chuck and Josh dive into the nuts and bolts of what makes the Wonder Machine so wondrous and find it actually lives up to the years-long hype they’ve given it. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Slash host hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I hard podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do you've come to the right place? Because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life

Tell everybody yeah, everybody About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with the Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts Welcome to stuff you should know a production of I heart radio Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark There's Charles Levy Chuck Bryant and Jerry is with us as we journey into the heart of the magnetic darkness Known as an MRI machine The wonder machine after all these years of talking about this thing. I finally get it. I know it. It's crazy

we've been Kind of amazed by it and then a little bit turned off by it But then we realized it's not the machine itself It's the way it's being applied and so we kind of came back to it again and it nuzzled us and it's boar and It got kind of sexy. Yeah, and we're also guilty of the FMRI crime that now I kind of feel bad about What is that? Is that a Queen's Reich album? Yeah, maybe we'll just talk about that later when it's appropriate

What the Queen's Reich album? No the FMRI blunder that we've been making for 13 years Sure, I feel like okay. All right, we'll go over that fine fine fine I don't want to mess anything up instead. We're gonna mostly talk about the MRI the wonder machine as it is because Chuck we were always just amazed by it to begin with but now that I understand it. I feel even more amazed by it I'm proud of humanity for having come up with this thing Yeah, I mean, it's pretty amazing that and we'll talk about the history of it and everything in a sec But it's amazing that human beings Got together

With their cohorts mm-hmm and said, you know what we can do the human body is made up of 60 to 65 percent water So let's figure out how to use magnetic fields and radio waves to measure that water In the tissues of our body and then we can map it and then we can image it Right and so those initial people who said that were burned at the state because it was like the 16th century still but when a Few more hundred years passed a few new people came onto the scene and they encountered a completely different environment One that was kind of nurturing of science and advancement and the idea that you could see inside the human body without cutting it open and the person Who won what actually kind of interestingly turned out to be a race Among researchers who were all trying to sell solve the same problem at the same time

independently was a guy named Dr. Raymond Demadean or Demadean and he is credited as the first person to invent the the fully functional human sized MRI, but he's one of Typically at least three people who are credited with with inventing the MRI if that makes sense Yeah, I mean when he got in there in July of 1977 Nothing really happened and I think one of his colleagues said hey, maybe you're too big for this thing They put in a smaller person and it worked for the first time. It took about five hours to get an image They named the thing indomitable and if you look up pictures, it's in the Smithsonian now of indomitable

It you know, it's one of these things that looks Like a bare bones version of what it ended up looking like It's like the the MRI version of a wicker wheelchair all bet sort of did you didn't see a picture? No, because I suspect it as much. I didn't want it to haunt my dreams. Yeah, I mean it looks sort of like this big donut I think the difference in this one is that it shows and it may I'm not sure if it's Dr. Demadean in the photo or not, but they're actually wearing Some coils around their body But there is a larger donut as well

Do they look like they're on craft work tour? So there were two other people Demadean was the first one I'm glad that we settled on a pronunciation by the way And he was the first one to cross the finish line, but there were other two others who were working on that same problem Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield And like I was saying, they were all working independently on this problem. This thing that had been demonstrated in 1945 called nuclear magnetic resonance Yeah, which which is that you can make atoms do really peculiar things when you put them in the presence of A magnetic field if it's strong enough it kind of snaps them all into attention They click their heels and they say yes, sir. I'll get that pate for you immediately and

And that's not how they normally behave and so these guys Demadean Lauterbur and Mansfield all were like somehow some way There's a way to use this to him to use This nuclear magnetic resonance to look inside of the body and that's what they said about trying to do Yeah, and pretty early on they cut the word nuclear out of it and went with imaging So MRI was born. I think It wasn't probably a great time and maybe it's never a great time to throw the word nuclear into anything You know everything from nuclear power to nuclear bombs have a bad rap quite frankly Yeah, it gets even worse if you pronounce it nuclear. Oh, man

and then there was someone else we do need to shout out a physicist by the name of Seiji Ogawa or Ogawa. How would you pronounce that? Ogawa and it's Seiji Any value see in Japan just screams to be pronounced independently. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. They love it. See see G E Seiji That's what I would go with. Okay. I'm serious. I really think it is. I believe you just sounded funny and so what happened So why we're shouting this person out is because they Discovered that if you have oxygen poor hemoglobin, it's gonna react differently by this magnetic field

That's created in the MRI machine then really good oxygen-rich hemoglobin and that that contrast you could basically Eventually end up seeing blood flow like imaging blood flow. Yeah, cuz what Damarian and his cohort were doing were Imaging tissues inside of the body Ogawa said well, actually you can track the flow of blood in those tissues as well It actually laid the groundwork for what became fMRI functional MRI and then also more importantly magnetic resonance Angiography which is basically tracking blood flow in blood vessels in real time basically. Yeah, and all this stuff was revolutionary because a You really nailed it on the head earlier like you don't have to cut people open anymore to see this stuff

we've had x-rays for a long time and They're great if you want to look at certain things like your your bones and See if you got a cracked rib or something But when it comes to soft tissue x-rays were useless We'll talk a little bit more about CT can't CT scans and why they're awesome in their own way, but not still not as I guess Functional as an MRI Well plus CT scans. I didn't realize this CT is computed tomography. They use x-rays as well So you're still getting that dose of radiation from a CT scan too. All right

So all that is just to lead up to say that the MRI just beats them all those other machines stink It truly earns a nickname the wonder machine Boy, I feel like like we should take a break before diving into this thing. Should we I'm thinking hold on Yeah, I think this is a good spot for a break. Okay, let's do it Hey everybody when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could What could it earn so I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard Treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel So, yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air

Bnb.ca Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I hard podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road Okay, see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands? Give me in this situation if you do you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this I promise you. Oh god, seriously, I swear and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you Oh, man, and so my husband Michael. Um, hey, that's me Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step

Oh, not another one kids relationships life in general can get messy You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now if so tell everybody yeah Everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen So we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts Okay, so we're back and a bit of an early break, but that's because we're about to get in the weeds with the actual nuts and bolts Ironically probably doesn't have any nuts and bolts It's probably probably what heavy-duty plastic rivets. I don't know it might just be like large solid injection molded pieces

That's a good question. We should have learned that but anyway the metaphorical nuts and bolts of this thing If you've ever seen when they look like a big doughnut you sit on a little, you know, it looks like a Mortuary tray. Yeah, and you get slid in through this hole in this tube It's only about 24 inches in diameter So they're not great if you are claustrophobic, but they do Make machines that aren't quite they don't give you quite what you want with a closed system, but they're a little more opened up Yeah, and I got the impression that they're starting to really kind of revisit those because you can't produce quite as Great a magnetic field or as powerful a magnetic field with an open system

But I think they're starting to figure out you don't necessarily need the most powerful magnetic field So stay tuned for that in 10 years but right The the the most important part of the whole MRI machine obviously is the magnet. That's what produces the magic is This magnetic field that so that doughnut that elongated doughnut that you're slid into in the tube That is the magnet basically and it's not like a magnet like you'd put on your fridge It would suck your fridge into what amounts to a black hole basically if you got your fridge anywhere near this thing It's a different kind of magnet. It's a superconducting magnet made up of coils probably copper coils

That an electrical current is run through and when you run an electrical current through a coiled Set of metal you can produce a magnetic field. That's great like fantastic But to produce the kinds of like the powerful magnetic fields that they're producing in an MRI You actually need a superconducting magnet and that's just a whole nother level Yeah, I mean if you want to Create a very large and stable field and we're talking I think they measure magnets in

Is it got our gauze? I think gauze g a u s s so gauze is the measurement one Tesla is ten thousand gauze So if you're looking at just a regular fly-by-night MRI wonder machine You're looking at about 1.5 Roughly 1.5 Tesla or about 15,000 gauze As far as the magnetic field goes and that's Compared to 0.5 for the magnetic field of planet Earth

Yeah, not 0.5 Tesla 0.5 gauze. Yeah, her to 15,000 gauze It's like 50 to 60 thousand times more for your average machine, but they even make them that go all the way up to 10 Tesla Yeah, which is What a hundred thousand gauze. Yeah, and the more gauze the more the prettier machine is Well, just getting the prettier pictures are Yeah, another thing that I saw though is that they're figuring out that when you get past a certain Tesla of Magnetic field that matter you It does matter and that it actually gets worse

Oh because you're picking up so much detail that you can't tell a bit from a Bob basically And if you're a radiologist using terms like bits and bobs, you need to get out of the field Yeah, room for somebody who takes the job a little more serious. That's interesting I wonder if that also goes hand-in-hand with the open machines and them saying like we don't need as much Gauze as we thought we did I think it does I think they're figuring out ways to get better resolution off lower power because not only is it really expensive I think it's a new machine costs about a million dollars per Tesla It produces so if you got a 10 10 Tesla machine, which really at this point from what I understand

You're just showing off as a medical center. Yeah You just spent 10 million dollars on this one MRI machine in your medical center But that also it costs a lot of money to run one of these things because to keep this stable magnetic field going You got to run a lot of electricity through it and that's where the superconductivity comes in Yeah, I mean you want to I mean you got to have like zero resistance running through those wires Mm-hmm, and they do this and I remember we talked about this in our Are we running out of helium? I can't remember what it was called But we did an episode on the fact that helium

Was in short supply and one of the downsides of this it wasn't just birthday balloons was the fact that they use helium liquid helium to To to make these copper coils superconductive and I think at the order of about 452 degrees below zero so without that helium they they I don't know if they're looking at alternatives or if there's a Plan B or not, but they need helium Well, remember in our Macy's Thanksgiving Day prerative So I don't know if it made it in there or not But they they found like a helium supply that basically like and Macy's bought it

That basically like expanded our supply of helium by some infinite amount, so we're like flush with helium That's true. I remember that so so I think we're okay So we can just the can was kicked down the road Chuck. We don't need to worry about that Yeah, exactly. We don't need to plan for the future like why 2k, right? It's exactly right nice nice call out All right, so you've got your big magnet you you also have Gradient magnets you have three gradient magnets and those are not nearly as on the magnitude of that the big daddy these are about 180 to 270 goss and Your main magnet is what's creating that main magnetic field that we're going to go over in detail in a second

The real stable one, but the other magnets create the variable field, which you know, that's what you need to run it Against to the other one to make those images happen Yeah, that's the that's basically what you use like to direct the the beam Essentially as it were like if you need a shoulder looked at it would be then a different location than your knee Yeah, yeah, and you would say well actually I need it a little to the left And you would use these gradient magnets to move the magnetic field and what you're really moving from what I understand With the gradient magnets is a radio frequency pulse. Yes, and This is this is where things this is where it all comes together. Yes, you're using three different things, right?

You've got the magnet and when you when you put Hydrogen when you put a body. Well, we're not quite there yet. Oh No, oh You want me to do it now? Well, I mean certainly was anticipation of my part. Okay. All right. I won't let you down Chuck so when you go into the MRI bore and You enter this magnetic field. That's the tube. I don't think we mentioned that true Yes, when you go in the tube and you enter the magnetic field the atoms in your body Have what's called the magnetic moment, which means that they respond to very strong magnetic fields by

abandoning their kind of random spin along their axis their procession and snapping in line along the polar ends of The magnetic field and in the MRI that that's running lengthwise down the middle So if you're laying on your back in an MRI tube the magnetic field is going from your feet to your head and That magnetic field causes the atoms in your body or the the particles in your body that make up atoms to Snap into line with that polarity. So all of a sudden you have protons in this case as far as the MRI is concerned

hydrogen protons Suddenly going from random spins to all facing your feet or all spinning toward your head one or the other but Technically along the same line. Yeah, so some of those are and I think in the the biz they call it aligning parallel or anti-parallel and They sort of cancel each other out, but there's always going to be more parallel aligned hydrogen atoms and those are the ones that We are using to measure the MRI basically like everything else just sort of cancels each other out and those leftover ones and it sounds You know, there's there's so many that you can have the cancellation of many and it still works

So I only saw this in the House of Works article. I everywhere else I saw basically made no mention of the fact that like whether they were aligned toward your feet or toward your head Like that that mattered and that you were focusing on the ones that hadn't aligned like I only saw it in this article Oh, I saw it in other places. Oh, you did. Okay. So then kids science What is what they were all based off this House of Works article? No, no, you could tell they were original What is I was just teasing you know, I love kids science websites Chuck. I can't remember which one this one was but it was a good one Okay, so regardless of what which atoms you're focusing on either the ones that are polarized from Along the magnetic field or the ones that haven't been polarized

That's that polarity is being created by the main magnet the superconducting magnet That has basically zero resistance because it's bathed in liquid helium and cooled to just astounding temperatures, right, right? Now when you bring in the radio frequency pulse, which is oscillating. It's turning on and off very very quickly What what was discovered over the last century or so before MRIs were ever even developed but what forms the basis of the principle that MRIs operate on is that if you apply a radio frequency to a bunch of of hydrogen protons Undergoing their magnetic moment

You can actually adjust The way that they're aligned you're kind of like pushing or pulling them out of Alignment and they're kind of struggling against it But you can you can overcome that with the radio frequency pulse And so that's basically step one of the MRI is getting them knocked out of that polarity so that you can turn that off and in basically Gauge and measure them as they snap back into that polarity. Yeah, and that radio frequency pulse It has to be the same frequency of those spinning protons

so if not they're not going to be in resonance that's where the word resonance comes from if they have that same frequency that can exchange inner energy with one another and they're on resonance with one another and When they turn it on and off like you said, there's a moment where they snap back into snap back to attention essentially and it takes a little bit of time and a little bit of energy and That energy is what they're basically trying to measure like that movement yeah, and Because the protons the hydrogen protons the reason they selected hydrogen protons is because it's so abundant throughout the body

It's far and away the most abundant atom in the body is hydrogen That that you're gonna find it in every bit every every nook and cranny of your body That's another term radiologists should stay away from but we can use it the nooks and crannies of your body all are filled with hydrogen protons so They know that a hydrogen proton in like fat tissue is going to snap back into place and then release energy at a slightly different frequency and at a slightly different rate than the hydrogen protons making up water in the body or bone in the body or You know your hair on your shoulders or whatever all all of this stuff is going to just be just slightly different and they basically know

What the data that comes back what it's telling them is oh, hey, I'm a I'm a fat. I'm in a bunch of fat over here I'm in some water over here I'm shoulder hair over here and this is the data that gets transmitted to the computer that's measured by The computer that's running the MR. Yeah, and that energy burst that it emits It's at a very specific frequency named the Larmore Frequency after an Irish physicist named Sir Joseph Larmore he discovered this all the way back in 1897 and And you will never need to know this information, but just in case you want to know the Larmore frequency

For hydrogen in this case is forty two point five eight megahertz per Tesla of magnetic force That's a I don't even know if that's like a cocktail that that's not even a jeopardy question That's a dark little pet You keep in your pocket that you pull out and like stroke every once in a while Just reassure yourself that you're very smart. Yeah, like LeVar Burton should be LeVar Burton Would ask that question on jeopardy and Ken Jennings would say you got to be kidding me nobody cares Love so you're lower. You're pulling for LeVar. He's not gonna make it

I mean the other guy the somehow the executive producer of the show isn't sort of naming himself. Oh really? Yeah, I mean he said that he didn't make the call But us I don't know man. He I thought LeVar Burton was great and would be great for that show I'm part of team George Stephanopoulos Did he guess? Yeah, or Aaron Rodgers. He did a good job. I didn't see that one, but he's still got more football to play I'm with you though. I think LeVar Burton would be wonderful and from what I read. He really wants it, too So I just don't get it and a lot of people are mad already. So I'm not alone

So so the the decision's been made. It's the executive producer now. It said that they're in the final negotiations and You know now there are some people pointing to his past because this guy's a Experience game show executive producer and they were like, yeah when you run the price is right You did some not so great things and oh So we'll see what happens. I don't know what a dusty old crotch Oh, I don't know we'll see what happens Let's bring humility back everybody. Just sit this and yeah small doses is fine That's right. And this has been game show soap

And speaking of go listen to our live game shows episode. I think from Denver. That was really good Do we do one on game shows? Oh my Yes, we did a good one All right, so where are we? We were at the Larmore frequency. I Guess the one thing we need to mention, too. You talked earlier about the gradient magnets Being applied to very specific parts of the body in the biz they call those areas slices So you can just get us if they if you hear someone and if you're going to get an MRI and you're nervous And they say get a slice of the shoulder

Then you're not getting a slice the whole point is that of an MRI is that you don't get sliced Yes, and one of the other advantages is that because you can move these gradient magnets all over the place at all different planes You can get all sorts of different views of the same area top bottom side underside All the sides and that's a huge huge advantage that MRI offers again without spilling a single drop of blood Yeah, and I guess the final piece of the puzzle here is this is all well and good that this little magic machine Works like this, but you still have to be able to Have a doctor look at a picture of this stuff

the imaging part of MRI is Just as important as the rest because that's what they need to assess your situation And they do this through the magic of computers and math And I think that's it that's that right we don't have to go any more into it than that I mean, you know don't fully understand it to you It makes it the image and turns it to a mathematical formula that allows it to be like 50 people on the planet who fully understand how it happens All I know is there's a really expensive computer attached and

And it's the one that converts all that data into a 2d or 3d image. That's right. That's all you need to know really Yeah, and then it ends up in the hands of a radiologist who basically says oh, it's this oh, it's a donkey that kind of thing or Increasingly in the hands of AI which has gotten really really good at reading radiological charts including MRIs to look for weird anomalies because One of the great advantages of an MRI is those images it produces Really can resolve water in the body and One of the reasons that's important is because when you start to suffer disease one of the one of the

Almost universal symptoms of any kind of disease malady or disorder in the human body is an increase in the the amount of water The thing is is like the MRI is going to show you that but you or I can't see that You got to go to school for many many years and become a radiologist to say Oh, that's that's just a little fluid buildup or oh, that's a tumor It's tough to distinguish it needs a human or again an AI to make that distinction But the MRI is going to give you the picture that will show you that thing that a radiologist could look at and say that's water That's a tumor. That's right Pretty neat stuff like we said all along

the wonder machine That's right, and that feels like a great time for break number two and when we come back We'll talk a little bit about our fMRI shame that I feel that you're not even aware of Oh Josh right after that prepare for our shame Hey everybody when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn so I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel So, yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca slash host

All right Chuck why should we be ashamed because I think I remember things differently than you do. That's what I think it is So here's the deal with fMRI functioning MRIs. They track blood flow and What they've long done in Psychiatry and Neurology since this has been invented and we've talked about this a lot on the podcast It they will do an fMRI of your brain and they will show you pictures of certain things or have you react to certain stimuli It can be an object or a word that they say out loud or whatever And they see where that blood flow is going in the brain with the idea of like well

Hey, if you're getting that fresh blood right here in this part of the brain that means that that's the part of your brain that is reacting to the stimulus and The more I read about it the more it seemed like that's a pretty good guess and we don't really know what's going on with the neurons This is just seeing what's lighting up and I think where I feel bad is many many times over the years We've said, you know, and then they showed them a picture of this and by the Bing by the boom This part starts lighting up so case closed and it's not as like kind of bulletproof as that See, this is where I remember differently. We've trashed that idea multiple times over. Did we yeah? Oh, okay, totally. I remember specifically talking about one study where a guy put like a dead salmon in an MRI and then wrote a

Paper about what it must have been experiencing because some voxels showed lit up. Really? Yeah, we made good as we went along. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Okay, totally We sniffed that stuff out. We've been sniffing that stuff off the case since oh wait, oh man Yeah, all right. Well, I don't feel bad anymore. No, don't don't we definitely trashed that over the years and it's it was worth being trashed in that it somebody figured out like You can use this to a certain degree And yes, you can see all this region's lighting up but what they quickly found is that a region of the brain has

Hundreds or thousands or countless numbers of neurons involved in that area and they're not all just doing the same thing They're all performing different functions. They're all connected in different ways and until we can Get our resolution down on basically the individual neural level The point there's a zero point almost in putting someone in an fmri And and showing them pictures of of whatever and seeing how they're stimulated it because it's all just guesswork Somebody compared it to phrenology modern phrenology. You're just extrapolating huge things from very limited findings And so we've figured that out very early on like that's been a long-standing criticism We we definitely dialed into that. I feel better than ever then about our efforts. I'm I'm so glad man

Thank you for correcting that although one good thing about fmri is is that angiography where you can track blood flow Outside of the brain and extrapolate it beyond, you know, social psychology studies Yeah, if if a social psychology study could even get enough funding to pay for an MRI rental Well, we had some social psychologists and Husbands and wives of social psychologists the right end and they were kind of mad at you. They're mad again You know, you should not be mad at are the inventors of the MRI because these things are really pretty safe You are not being exposed to radiation and that's a great thing you there have been not many incidences of

mishaps with an MRI machine One of the dangers of an MRI is obviously, you know, the super magnet is going to be metal if you've ever had one They're gonna ask you and ask you several more times if you have any metal on your body You're not gonna go in there with your earrings. You're not gonna go in there with even Certain kinds of makeup has metal in it Yeah, if you have a pacemaker or aneurysm clips in your brain or if you're like me dental implants you're gonna want to talk to them about that and Because some of that stuff is still okay. It's not like it will rip a pacemaker out of your chest because they're smarter than that now

But if you have an old pacemaker that might be a problem, right? Yeah, and even a new pacemaker can malfunction in the presence of a really strong magnetic field It won't be ripped from your chest, but it's it might stop working and that's not good You know, you don't want that to happen But there are like think like if you have like metal anywhere on you It will be pulled out of your pocket your pocket might be pulled right off of your pants basically Depending on whether it's one of those externally sewed pockets or an internal probably have a gown on anyway Sure, but you could just be some schmo who likes to stand around MRI rooms and gain the entry

One of the big problems is the actual medical equipment themselves. There's medical equipment that is That is has been developed to be used in an MRI room And then there's medical equipment that accidentally finds its way into an MRI room and ends up getting sucked violently into the bore and That is really dangerous. There's there's actually some astounding pictures on the internet if you search MRI catastrophe of There's there's one and I can't tell if it's real or not There's a wheelchair that sucked into the bore with feet sticking out from under it. I Didn't see a corroborating story, but people have died from being hit by objects or pinned to the bore Between a metal object and the bore

And it's very very rare. It's very infrequent because people running MRIs tend to know what to look for and what questions to ask and What to look out for but it has happened and when it happens It's got to be one of the most violent things you could ever win. Yeah about 20 years ago There was a boy who was killed when an oxygen tank was pulled into the bore But like you said, that's that's the kind of thing that makes the news the world over because it's so rare I think every year there are millions and millions of MRI scans in the United States alone and the FDA gets about 300 adverse event reports annually and

most of these are like My skin burned some because it got really hot Because I don't think we mentioned like the MRIs I've had have been very brief just a few minutes You can be in there for like an hour or an hour and a half and you have to lay completely still and this the sound that they make is just It's unnerving. It's this it's like this digital clanging and there are clack-sons and buzzers and It's just not I remember I talked about it years ago on the show when I had my first one It's not a relaxing scene at all. It's a little unnerving even though, you know, it's safe just because of the noise

so But it but it's it is safe like accidents usually don't happen Yeah, that noise I forgot you had one before a couple now from what I understand that noise is relative to the the Teslas that the maid magnet puts out because when you put the I Guess maybe the gradient magnets in there They they respond to that maid magnet and that's what produces that hammering or clacking sound or whatever

And it can it can get really loud and give you tinnitus or hearing loss even if they don't give you You know ear muffs. Have you still never had one? No, let me just knock on wood there How did yours turn out pretty great? Yeah, I can't even remember what the first one was for to be honest It was so many years ago And then I had one more recently for my for my gut Oh, yeah. Yeah for my gi. They were looking at my gi Flow not flow Below for stuff. You're calling below

They were looking for diverticula specifically and So I was in an MRI machine and that didn't take very long and I think they use dye for that one That's another thing that we didn't mention is I don't think they always use dye as a contrast But sometimes they do yeah about a third of them They use dye and the dye seems to be from what I can tell the the the only truly questionable part About the MRI experience because when you come out of that magnetic field your atoms I'll go back to normal the way they were and you know, there's no long-term effects, but apparently the dye they use is

is made of a gandalinium gandalinium, which is a metallic element and They collate it so that your body doesn't like it doesn't stick around your body You actually pee it out gets processed through kidneys in very rare instances Some people hang on to it and it can cause a little bit of kidney damage, but far and away almost everybody passes it It seems to be the question is using dye when you give an MRI to a woman who's pregnant

Because the the woman will pee it out, but the little baby in uterus or in utero Recycles the stuff that comes in there So it will just be ingesting and peeing and ingesting and peeing that gandalinium until it's born And then that's not really good for the old kidneys. So apparently they the FDA recommends that you err on the side of the mother's health like like it's if it's a Like a medical emergency in the mom that the that requires an MRI for the mom including dye that the FDA and apparently the AMA would say Just go ahead and do it And roll the dice, but if it's not a medical emergency and the woman has to get an MRI

They would probably avoid using the dye. Yeah, the dye was yeah the dye was That was kind of one of the more interesting parts because you can feel it Wow old running through your body Wow, which is really interesting and I got a taste in my mouth like this kind of funky taste Wow, that's really amazing. Yeah, which is always a little weird You mentioned pregnant women though, but kids is another thing MRIs I think 90% of MRIs go to fully grown adults and And kids present a problem because kids are fidgety obviously Mm-hmm, and they're hard to keep still and you got to start over if you want to get a good picture

So it's it's kind of been tough and a lot of times they have to Anesthetize a child to put them in an MRI machine, which you know anytime you're going under anesthesia There's a risk there and people don't like doing that in general if you don't have to so there are some really smart people working on that I think a few years ago. There was an article about a Stanford pediatric radiologist name Shreyas Vasanah Vasanah Wala and He was working on basically kind of making it Taylor made MRI machines for kids that are Smaller and a little more open and don't have these huge bulky coils for their little bodies. That's amazing

What a great thing to do with your time, you know agreed. I mean Or you could just get on a podcast and run your mouth I don't think that's a less good thing to do with your time, but regardless I think the MRI machine is still maybe even more than ever the Wonder Machine Chuck. I Agree and it's cool to know how it works and you know if you Heard this and go in to get an MRI it might arm you with a little knowledge. You can go in there and talk about What's the what was that number again the frequency? 42.58 megahertz per Tesla. Yeah of magnetic field applied. Just go in there start throwing that around while you have your

Smartphone in your pocket If you're about to get an MRI this may do you a little less nervous about it agreed Well if you want to know more about MRIs just do a little research or maybe go get one done Go hit up your doctor and say how about an MRI? Let's check it out and they'll say okay hop in I could use the money And since I said I could use the money obviously it's time for listener mail That's right before I read this when I do want to shout out We've got quite a few emails on people who have the weird compulsion to equal out the crack stepping

Yeah feet like I noticed that too. I was kind of surprised at how many people have that same thing going on and The people I think I read one of them That said he also liked to chew and equal on both sides of his mouth quite a few people also had that which I don't have but It's nice to know that us crack steppers or I don't know I feel united Yeah, there's a there's a whole cadre of you guys out there turns out. Yeah, we're gonna take over the world one day I know But I'm gonna call this one from Rodney about reverse on osmosis Hey guys, you get her did a really nice job on reverse osmosis

It can indeed solve the drinking water problem worldwide as well as help solve some of the environmental problems in our industrial processes You should also do a program on Electrolytics This technology can take salt and convert it to disinfectants that are used to treat water and kill microorganisms that make people sick 9,000 people die every day from waterborne disease worldwide And this this guy Rodney has a couple of companies That deal with this so offered us up some technical assistance if we wanted to do something on that nice very nice Thanks a lot Rodney

appreciate that Offer and congratulations to you for saving the world agreed If you want to get in touch with us like Rodney did because you're saving the world or because you Just want to say hi doesn't matter. We were fine either way You can get in touch with us by sending an email to stuff podcast at I heart radio calm Stuff you should know is a production of I heart radio for more podcasts my heart radio visit the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows

Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I heart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band or each week to guide you through life Tell everybody yeah, everybody About my new podcast and major crude ruble is New podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye. Bye

Listen to frosted tips with a lance bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever. You listen to podcasts I'm Munga妳 Glitter and it turns out astrology Is way more widespread than any of us want to believe you can find In major league baseball What I had to handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas

are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.