Stuff You Should Know - How X-Rays Work

Episode Date: December 4, 2014

Like many huge discoveries, X-rays were accidentally stumbled upon. That serendipity led to a medical breakthrough still in use today. Learn about how X-rays are created and why they make such delightful images of our bones. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart 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 Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryan as always. And there's Jerry over there, fiddling around with stuff. So it's Stuff You Should Know the Podcast. Not Stuff You Should Know the Movie. That's right. You know. Where's one secrecy

about that? That'd be a good movie. That'd be a bad movie. I don't know, man. It could go either way. I always see, I imagine it like Strange Brew. Oh yeah? Yes. They could base it on the Stuff You Should Know Tell All book I'm writing. Oh yeah? That would be exciting. That would be very exciting. I'm looking forward to that book. Like a lifetime movie of the week. Do you like switch people's names? Like in my Joe? Joe Clark. Yeah, exactly. No. It's sort of like, did you see the Save by the Bell movie? Oh yeah, I didn't Screech write a book. It was based on a book by Screech, right? Yeah. Wasn't it like all sex and drugs and stuff? Oh, it was a bunch of teenagers in Hollywood. So sure, there was some of that in there. But it was, I didn't read the

book, but the movie was bad and not nearly as salacious as you wanted it to be. Right. I remember a lot of people being disappointed. And by remember, I mean, I recall the like two weeks ago when people were talking about it when it came out. It's done. I'll watch Emily and I'll watch some of those just terrible, terrible biopics occasionally on TV. And it's, it can be fun. Like we watched the, who is the one actor, Brittany Murphy, the Brittany Murphy story. Oh, really? Does she have a heck of a story? Is she alive still or did she die? No, she passed away under kind of weird circumstances because she and her husband both passed away within weeks of each other. Weird. And there were all these strange claims that her house was poisoned, that they were poisoned. And yeah,

it was, it was fun. What's your take on it? Oh, I don't know. The movie wasn't very good. Who played Brittany Murphy, do you remember? Julie Bowen, wasn't it? No. She's in all of those. Someone who didn't look very much like Brittany Murphy. Julie Bowen. I was right. The Ashton Kutcher guy was pretty good though, I gotta say. Steve Jobs played him. They should have just gotten Ashton Kutcher to play himself. He's not doing much. He's on with two and a half men. No, no, no. That's gotta require 15 minutes of work a week. He's selling cameras. Do you remember when that whole two and a half men thing was going down? We were in LA and for the one and only time in my entire life, I see John Crier that day. Oh, during the Charlie Sheen meltdown,

like the day of the meltdown, like it happened at night and within eight hours, I saw John Crier for the first time in person at a McDonald's. Did you yell ducky? No, I left him alone. He looked stressed out. Well, yeah, he's probably like my career is going down the tubes, but little did he know. He's a survivor. Yeah, his career is just fun. So x-rays is what we're talking about, right? Yep. That was the lightest part of this podcast. Yeah, I like this one. This one, it's one of those things where if you can just hang on by your fingernails, it can click and then you lose it again. But that means that it could click again later on. That's what I like about it. Good. I'll leave that to you. I got lots of other stuff about it that I totally understand. Good,

good. So have you ever broken anything and needed an x-ray or has it all just been dental stuff? You know, dude, never broken a bone. Not going to knock on wood. Yeah. I mean, I've had my injuries were always stitches. I was always getting busted open. Oh, yeah. Rocks and sprinklers and I was always getting cut and sewed back up, but I never broke a bone. That's great. Yeah. You should probably knock on wood one more time just to be safe. Yeah. So, yeah, all of my x-rays too have been like just going to the dentist or whatever. You never had a bone broken? I don't want to say because I don't even know if knocking on wood will do it. On laminate, Ikea wood. That would just be so horribly interesting if both of us broke a bone after this. Yeah. And we're at the age where like,

you should break bones when you're a kid where you're like, eh, whatever, I get a cast at this age. It's a drag. Yeah. I remember reading like a Tom Clancy novel and like some kid got an arm torn off or whatever. And one of the surgeons was like, if the arm's in the same room as the kid, it can be healed. Right. That doesn't hold true in your Tom Clancy's age. No. So you are familiar with x-rays. So you've seen them before. You've watched ER, surely? Yeah. I mean, I've had x-rays for like the dental ones, like you said, and then just other various like chest x-rays for sicknesses and things like that. Right. Which I think may be a little frivolous, to be honest. Yeah. And kind of dangerous, really. Yeah. Conceivably. Sure. Which we'll get into later, but

did you, were you familiar with x-rays at all beyond that? Did you know that they were invented or discovered accidentally? Yeah, I did know that. I did not. That's one of the few things I know. I thought I saw a little like quickie short on some like, it might have been actually science channel. I looked all over. The most I could find was a dude on Siemens just describing it in the most flat aspect. I watched every single one of his videos. Yeah. I got to five and five wouldn't load and I was like, forget this. Yeah. Five never loaded for me. I watched the other 14 though. And the whole time I was going, man, these are a minute long. Please join them all together into one six minute video. I know. It was so weird. Yeah. It was pretty silly. But he was, he was good.

He was just very dry. Yeah. And they spent zero pennies on any kind of soundtrack or anything. Like if he grabs papers, you hear papers rustling in the classroom. It was pretty straightforward. Yes. But that's a very windabout, roundabout way of getting to, it's discovery in 1895 by a German physicist named Wilhelm Röntgen. Nice. And he was testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass. And he saw that the fluorescent screen was glowing when he turned on his electron beam, which wasn't a big deal, but he was like, wait, he's got cardboard around it. Right. There shouldn't be any visible light escaping. Which is silly to think of now. Well, yeah, it is. But you have to put yourself in his shoes like X-rays hadn't been discovered

because he was literally on the verge of discovering them right then. That's right. And yeah. So he was like, this is very curious that this is fluorescing. Yeah. And he noticed other things were glowing. And eventually he started putting other objects between the tube and the screen. They glowed. The screen did, that is. Finally put his hand there. I read his wife's hand. Oh, really? He's like, either way. Come in here for a second. I want you to try something. And saw bones projected. And then I guess probably poo pooed his pants. It's a man. I think I'm on to something here. Yeah. It was really that quickly. Right. He was, like immediately the application was clear. It wasn't one of those things where it took 20 years.

Right. He was like, hold on. You can see bones. This could be really helpful. Yes. And he won a Nobel Prize. For very rightfully so. The first one ever for physics. And he named him X-rays because he didn't know what the heck it was. No, exactly. Kind of signing your name. He probably, I think he assumed that later on, future scientists would fill in the blanks, but they were like, no, we're cool with X-rays. Well, he probably thought that someone would eventually call it like the Runtgen ray or something. Right. He wasn't much of a self-promoter. He was just like, all this column X-rays is a placeholder. And he didn't patent anything. You know, he never like made money off of it. No. And then just a few years. And his wife had hand

cancer as a result. Really? No. Oh, I was laughing, but no, she didn't. It was just a joke. You can proceed with the laughter. Plus, I've never heard of hand cancer. It's got to be out there. And then a couple of years later, they were already using it in the Balkan war. It was the first time it was really put to practical use. The first Balkan war, the one around World War I. Well, no, 1897. Oh, that Balkan war. I didn't know that existed until just now. Yeah. And they said we can see bullets and shrapnel and stuff now, which is helpful. It is extremely helpful. So like this guy, Runtgen, discovers X-rays and their most practical application in one fell swoop, basically. Yep. And a little further study revealed that X-rays

are actually just another part of the electromagnetic spectrum of which radio waves, microwaves, what we call visible light. What else is on there? Well, I've got my handy wallet electromagnetic spectrum card. Yeah. And X-rays fall between gamma rays and ultraviolet rays on that spectrum. Right. Which are all below, well, you say below. I don't know if it's really an above or below situation, visible light and then infrared and microwaving radio waves. So it would be a higher or lower frequency because that's how the whole thing is divided. Yeah. So like the visible spectrum of light consists of electromagnetic radiation that has a frequency, a wavelength that our eyes are sensitized to. So we can pick up visible light. But there's plenty of other stuff

on the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation and all of it is delineated by the frequency, the wavelength. So at the highest end, you have gamma rays that are like. Yeah, that means the squiggly line is very close together. Exactly. And then on the farthest end, you have radio waves that are like. And that means the squiggly line is far apart. Exactly. And that is called chuck science. That's good stuff. Yeah. So back in my wallet. Right next to the, what else you have in there? I just have my Paps blue ribbon membership card, which actually do. Do you really? Yeah, but I've had it for like 20 years. Wow. When you, you got it when you're like seven, eight. Flatter me. So X-rays fall, I guess we're about in the, well, yeah, higher and they have a higher

frequency as far as the electromagnetic spectrum goes. But the point is, is that it is ultimately the same thing. It's a, it's a type of electromagnetic energy that is carried on a photon, which is a particle of what we would call light. Yeah. And we've talked about photons a plenty in the show. And the same like photons produce the visible light that we can see photons blast out from the sun. How long does it take? Like, it takes like 100,000 years to get from the core to the surface and then like eight minutes to get from the surface to earth. That's right. I love that fact. So this is the only part I understand. So I'll lead with it. If you want to imagine an atom, a nucleus of an atom and rings around that adium,

adium? That's a new word. An atom as orbitals. When an electron drops to a lower orbital, it releases energy in the form of a photon. And the electron will always drop to the lower orbital. That's right. So like if an orbital is, if an electron is kicked off of a lower orbital, an electron in the higher orbital goes yet and drops down to that one. Yes. And depending on how far it drops, it's going to determine the energy level of that photon. That it releases its energy when it drops, right? Yeah, because it doesn't have to drop more than one orbital. Right. It can skip down. I don't even know how far, but a long way. Yeah, it can. And like you said, the greater the distance between the two orbitals or the

greater the energy differential, the greater the energy that photon when released will have, right? That's right. And as we said, photons are the energy carriers of the electromagnetic spectrum. And depending on that energy or the frequency, the wavelength of that photon, that determines what kind of photon it is, right? Whether it's a radio photon or an x-ray photon, or a photon that we can see that's in the visible spectrum. That's right. Sometimes when these photons are flying around, they will collide with other atoms. And sometimes those atoms absorb that photon's energy and then kick it up to that higher level again. Right. But it has to be, from what I understand, and I saw that there's like, of course, it's science. So there's like

atomic science. So there's little exceptions to this and that. Sure. But from what I could see, Chuck, there is the energy of that photon has to exactly match the energy differential between one orbital and another on an atom so that it can kick it up so that it hits that one electron in the lower orbital, kicks it up to the higher orbital, and thus transfers its energy, which means that atom just absorbed that energy that that photon was carrying, right? That's right. But if it's a little less, it's not going to have the energy to kick that electron up, which makes sense to me, right? Yeah. But if it's a little more, this is what doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't kick the electron up and then the photon carries on

in a diminished energetic state. It just doesn't do anything. It doesn't interact with that. It has to be exact, say like the energy differential between orbits is eight. Yeah. So a photon has to have an energy of eight or else it's not going to do anything with that atom. That's right. Okay. And so depending on the – well, let's say you have a radio wave. They don't have very much energy, so they can't move electrons between these orbitals. They just pass through things. X-rays are super powerful. Right. There's lots of energy, so they can pass through things, which is key if you want to check out your bones from outside of your body. It is. And we're going to explain exactly how right after this.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will 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, 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 I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so we're back Chuck, and you tantalized everybody by saying that this difference in

absorption is what produces x-rays, right? Was that tantalizing? I was tantalizing, and I even know it's coming. All right. That's how excited I am about x-rays. Good. So consider this, different atoms have different atomic weights. They have different densities.

They're just different. Like different atoms are different. And atoms also have what are called differences in radiological density. Right. Okay, so a really high energy, high atomic weight, very dense atom, is going to be able to absorb a lot of energy. Smaller atoms that maybe are looser and have a lower atomic weight are going to get kicked around by any old photon that wants to come along.

Yeah, and that's key. Like I said, if you want to see bones, because your soft tissue, if you've ever noticed when you have an x-ray, you'll see the bones, but the rest is sort of a grayish black mess. Exactly. Because your soft tissue has smaller atoms, your bones, calcium atoms are much larger, so they're going to absorb those x-ray photons. That's exactly right.

They do it really well. Exactly. So imagine you have, let's say Chuck, let's go back and hang out with Tuck Tuck, right? Oh man. Let's get back in the way back machine. It's been a while. Okay. Look at him over there.

So here we are in France in this cave. Tuck Tuck has his hand up against the cave wall, as you'll see. And in his other hand, he's got that little straw filled with pigment, red pigment, and he's blowing it on his hand, right? Sure. And now that he moves his hand away, there's the outline of his hand. It's called a stencil, right? Exactly.

He's just made an early stencil. He's like a Banksy, basically, like a caveman Banksy. But if you look at the back of Tuck Tuck's hand, don't get too close, but look at the back of his hand. Yeah. It's covered in red pigment, right? Yeah. So if you want to equate this to an x-ray, the hand absorbed all of that pigment.

Right. And the stuff that passed through left the picture on the cave wall. That's kind of what happens with an x-ray, except with an x-ray photograph, the x-ray photons are absorbed by the denser, calcium-rich bones. Yes. And they pass through the softer tissue. So the picture that we have is the outline, the silhouette of the bones, because the x-rays made it through the tissue, didn't make it through the bones.

They made it through the tissue and onto the x-ray plate, which absorbed the picture in negative. That's right. And I'm glad he said picture, because that's all it is. On the other side of the human being, you know, that they're shooting the x-ray at, there's a camera, and you're just going to get a regular negative. And they could make it a positive, but they leave it as a negative, because you really don't need the positive image. Right.

And that's what they'll put on that little screen to show you your cracked femur. Exactly. And they can see the crack, because some of those x-rays will make it through the gap. That's right. Right? So all you're seeing is the result of x-rays that made it through the tissue were absorbed by the bone, so those don't make it to the plate. The ones that make it to the plate cause the chemical reaction that gives you your negative,

your x-ray. And it's pretty simple, really, like if you think about it, at least in principle. It's also extraordinarily difficult to conceive of, but if you understand, like, the principle behind it, it makes uttering complete sense. Yeah, and it's a pretty focused shot that they're using there. It's not like they don't fill the entire room with x-rays. You know, they've got a thick lead shield around the whole device, and it, you know, contains everything.

It's got a little small window that's just going to let that narrow beam pass through through a series of filters and basically hit you wherever they want to hit you. Yeah, and the reason that they use lead is because lead is an extremely dense element. Yes. Right? Sure. Oh, God, I hope so, with a very high atomic number, which means it can absorb tons of energy. Right?

Yeah, that's why you're going to wear a lead apron. If you're not, you know, if you're getting your skull done, you're probably going to wear an apron on your chest, let's say. Sure. So this lead is being bombarded with x-ray photons and electrons, and it's just taken it. It's fine, and it's not being able to, it's not able to pass through because it doesn't have high enough energy. But yes, when they put that little window in the x-ray generating machine,

it passes right through there in a concentrated beam. And Chuck, let's talk about the machine, right? So, and this is basically what we use as x-ray machines is essentially what Rootkin was made, was experimenting with when he accidentally discovered them. Because if you look for x-rays, like they're, they propagate naturally, but I think like 20% of the x-rays on Earth come from humans. Oh, really? Yeah, like we generate a lot of x-rays.

They don't, they don't come, like you don't find them normally on Earth. They're coming from outer space to us. Okay. Hence x-ray astronomy, but the ones here on Earth that are generated on Earth, they don't, it's not like rocks put out x-rays or something like that. Right. We do. We humans do.

Humans and light aprons put out x-rays, and they use this machine like Rootkin made. Yeah, what you have in the machine, you have an electrode pair, a cathode and an anode, and that's inside a good old-fashioned glass vacuum tube. Right. Which it's amazing how vacuum tubes are still like the best way to do many of these things. Well, it allows things to travel at the speed of light easily. That's right, and it allows guitar amps to sound great. I didn't know these vacuums in that.

Oh, is that a cathode tube? Yeah. Yeah, like a, like the best amps are still made with vacuum tubes. You can get solid state amps, but they're just, the sound isn't as rich. So it's kind of like this old technology that's still superior. Right. They're all pumped out by hand by a 90-year-old man in Tennessee. Mr. Marshall.

Yes. No. So the cathode is a heated filament just like you might see in a light bulb, and the machine's going to pass a current through that and heat that thing up, and then it's going to spit electrons off that surface, and it's going to hit a disc made of tungsten, and it's going to draw those across a tube. It's basically, the tube is sort of the key piece. Right, because you've got the positive and the negative charge, the cathode and the anode, right? Yeah.

And that difference, that electrical charge draws those electrons down to the anode. Yeah, with a lot of force. Yeah, and that force means that when those electrons hit the tungsten anode, it knocks a bunch of electrons off, creates a bunch of x-rays in the process, and you have a whole box filled with x-ray radiation. A box full of x-rays. That's exactly what it is. It's like you're just, I mean there might as well be like a foot crank to this thing,

like an old sewing machine, for as technologically advanced as it is. There may be, for all I know, I don't know what goes on in that other room. Right, yeah, it's true. There's some dude in there with his right leg is three times more muscular than his left leg, because that's the only one he uses. So in addition, like I said to x-rays being created, the other x-rays, other photons can go on and knock more electrons off. So you have what's like a process of chain reaction starting, right?

It's like one gets hit and then that's it, and a photon's created, and it just hangs around until it's beamed out. You're just generating this huge amount of x-rays, and the x-rays are also continuing to propagate themselves, because they're knocking more electrons free, and the more free electrons you have, the more interactions you have, right? Right. So one of the ways that more electrons can be knocked off,

you don't even need a direct transfer of energy where a photon is absorbed or knocks an electron from one orbit to another or knocks it loose entirely. A photon actually has this really cool capability of just orbiting close by the nucleus of an atom, and when the nucleus basically draws it into its orbit, the photon just takes a hard left turn. Yeah, just bumps it off its course. But even like the Dodge Viper has to slow down to take a left turn slow a little bit, right? Just a little.

Just a little. But that little bit in the photon world means a transfer of energy from the photon outward. Yeah, as an x-ray. Yeah, and then the photon takes that left turn and the energy is transferred to the atom. Yeah, and one of the byproducts, if this sounds like it's going to create a lot of heat, it's because it will. And in order to combat this, they rotate this anode to keep it, it would just melt down and kept it in place.

And apparently there's a cool oil bath that helps absorb heat as well, which I never have heard of that either. It sounds oily. A cool oil bath? Yeah, it doesn't sound refreshing at all. It sounds like the opposite of refreshing. Yeah, cool and oil don't really go together. No.

And I misspoke that's an electron that can be drawn to the nucleus of an atom appropriately enough because they orbit nuclei anyway, but it doesn't have to hook up with that atom. When it takes that hard left, it emits the photon, like you said. That's right. And like I said earlier, there's a camera on the other side of the patient, and it's going to record that pattern of light when it passes through the body. And it's not so different from a regular camera. And then the engine is just going to get a picture, like I said, a negative image.

Yeah, and if you hook it up with a computer, that allows you to take x-rays basically in slices. You can come up with computerized tomography. Yeah, aka CT scan. Exactly. If you get a breast exam, you're using a type of x-ray called mammography. And then there's fluoroscopy, which the man in the extraordinarily dry presentation from Seaman said was basically like moving picture.

It's like a movie. Exactly. And then he showed us what a movie is with a flip book, right? That old flip book trick. And if you listen to this podcast, I'm sorry. I just want to apologize for both of us. Seaman's guy. Oh, yeah.

Like hats off to you for doing that at all. Yeah, because he's probably saying, well, at least I was correct in everything I said. It's a good point, sir. But with fluoroscopy, it's basically like a movie of an x-ray movie. And you would do this to make sure like a heart is beating correctly because you wanted to see it. But you have to have an additional instrument because as we've said, x-rays will pass through tissue like heart tissue and muscle tissue and all and in blood vessels and all the stuff you want to get pictures of using an x-ray.

So you have to use something called a contrast media for it. Yeah, a contrast agent is basically more dense than the soft tissue. So if you want to, let's say, swallow, it's usually like a barium compound. If you want to examine like your blood vessels or your circulatory system, sometimes it can inject that or you might drink it to see if you're doing like a gastrointestinal, like a GI tract, you're going to swallow that stuff, which I've never had to do. I think my dad had to do that. Yeah.

I don't think it's super pleasant. I get the impression not to. But my dad did as well. Yeah, it's an old guy thing. Yeah. So I should be getting one soon. And then it allows you to see a moving image, basically how that liquid, if there's any blockage, there's all sorts of applications for it.

Yeah, because that liquid has a high radiological density, which means that the x-rays don't just pass right through the tissue that it's being suspended in, like your blood vessels. It absorbs it for it. So you get a picture of your blood vessels, your circulatory system, which is pretty cool. It's pretty clever. It's also extraordinarily elementary and principal. That's right. My dear Watson.

And that single picture, I think we mentioned CT and mammography and all that and fluoroscopy, but the single picture is just called standard radiography. And that's when you're taking a photo of your skull or your lungs or your bones or your teeth. And so speaking of the lead apron thing, man, it's always made me kind of nervous. Like if I, the rest of my body has to wear a lead apron, but you're shooting an x-ray into my head, am I going to be okay? Well, we'll answer that right after this message. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart 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. Ah, okay. I 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. Yep, 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. Uh-huh. 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. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the co-classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, x-rays, are they bad for you? The answer is yes, pretty unequivocally, but like all things, it's in moderation is the key. In the 1930s and 40s and into the 50s, they had x-ray machines at shoe stores, so they could extra your feet to get a better fit,

and they didn't realize at the time that they were x-raying people way, way too much. You had talkative kids in class, they'd just shoot them with an x-ray, and would they? No, they probably did. I've got you like twice. Well, no, I believe that, like, hey, let's look at his brain. There may be a mouse running around inside of it. People in the 30s were dumb. Well, it's basically radiation sickness.

It's a form of ionization or ionizing radiation. All right. So what can happen, like if just normal light hits an atom, it's no big deal, but when an x-ray hits an atom, it knocks electrons off of it, creates an ion, which is an electrically charged atom, and basically anything from cellular death to mutation can happen at that point, and mutation can spread, and it can cause cancer. Right, because stable atoms are neutral, right? Because they have an equal number of protons and electrons.

You lose an electron, all of a sudden you have a positively charged ion, and that negatively charged electron running around, and it just causes trouble. And you said light, visible light, can be absorbed, and it's no big deal, because visible light exists on a wavelength that's about in tune with the soft tissues of our body, right? So we know how to absorb it, and it makes us tan, and that's cool, right? But with these ionized atoms, these positively charged atoms going around in your body, it can cause a lot of problems, like mutations, like cancer, right?

Yeah, I mean, if you break that DNA chain, that's not good for yourself. No, it isn't. And one of the results is the DNA can basically lose its ability to regulate itself, and the cell replicates more frequently than it should, and all of a sudden you have a tumor on your hands, and that can spread. It can also be a problem if that DNA break occurs in utero, because then that can lead to birth defects, which is why pregnant women shouldn't get x-rays. And it can also just lead to plain old cellular death.

If you have cellular death, then the tissues that are made up by those cells break down, and you have a problem on your hands with that as well. Well, so here's the deal. We get exposed to radiation every day, just walking around on the planet. It depends on where you live, but every year, the average person is going to be exposed to anywhere from one to four. It's measured in millisieverts per year. Like I said, depending on where you are, I think in higher elevations, it's less than at sea level. So if you live in Denver, Colorado, you're going to be exposed to less. Well, yeah, because you're higher up in the atmosphere, and that makes a difference.

Exactly. You have less protection, right? Yeah. So what they want to do, medically speaking, they want to use, or they're supposed to use, the minimum amount to achieve the pictures you need. It's not like the old days where they just like, let's 20 x-rays. Like let's do the minimum amount we need to get the information that we need. A CT scan can get your, you lay down in the tube, and it rotates around you, and your whole body can be photographed in less than five seconds these days. But there are concerns if you get too many x-rays still. Like a dental panorama, I think,

what does it say? One to four millisieverts per year. And it's cumulative too, you should say. It's not like you get one, and then eight months later, you get another one, and that first one went away. Like it accumulates over the course of a year. Yeah. So here's just a few examples of how much radiation you're being exposed to with x-rays. A dental panorama is going to be 0.01 millisieverts, so not very much. Like two chest x-rays might be 0.1, mammogram is around 0.4, your pelvis 0.6, your back, upper back maybe 1.0. I wonder why, because there's so much bone there? Maybe. Yeah, maybe you have to do with exposure to, yeah, that makes sense.

I got a ton of bone in my upper back. A full CT scan, it depends on what you are, it depends on what you're x-raying, but a CT scan is obviously more like an abdominal or pelvis CT scan, because be as many as 10 millisieverts. So that's like up to two or three years worth of radiation in a single CT scan, which can be problematic, which is why they don't say get in the CT machine like every other week. But some of the reasons you might, if you had a traumatic injury, they're going to x-ray you, a lot of times for disease confirmation, they'll use an x-ray machine. During surgery as a visual guide, like if you do endoscopic surgery, the surgeons actually needs to look at something. So sometimes it was x-rays for that, or to monitor

your healing process, you know, when you break a bone, it's not just that first x-ray, you're going to keep getting them to see how you're healing up. This is right out of the Siemens video, huh? No. It isn't? Uh-oh. Okay. I don't think so. I mean, I looked at so much stuff. Cumulative research. So I did a brain stuff on sieverts and how many we can take. Yeah. And yeah, it's kind of like, it's a little alarming. Sure. How much radiation we're exposing. People who fly a lot too are exposed to tons of radiation because you're, again, higher up in the atmosphere, so you're less protected by the atmosphere. Speaking of flying, of course, baggage. That is x-rayed. The food industry uses x-rays a lot. Archaeologists use it if they don't want to,

yeah, like destroy an object and they want to see what's inside. Or earth sciences, they'll use x-rays for rocks to see what kind of mineral composition. So there's all sorts of applications. It's not just medical space. Yeah. X-ray telescopes out on satellites. Yeah. Apparently, you can see a lot. You can see things you can't detect from an earthbound telescope because x-rays are absorbed by our atmosphere, so you can't shoot it into space like that. This article makes a pretty good point, if you ask me. It says, yes, x-rays are bad for you, and you should use them with care and caution. One good point is to always ask if there's an alternative to an x-ray just to basically say, hey, doc or Dennis, slow your roll. Yeah. Is there

another way we can get this information without an x-ray? I know it's the easiest, but what are the alternatives? But then the article makes the point like it's still safer than the ultimate alternative, the thing that x-rays replace, which was exploratory surgery. Yeah. Back in the day, if they thought you had cancer, they would cut you open and see. Yeah. And this is definitely better than that. Yeah. Or a broken bone. Imagine getting that arm cut open just to see how it's doing. They're like, no, it's not broken. And we haven't invented anesthetic yet, so. Good luck with your Dennis, by the way, because I always get the feeling that the Dennis are like, no, your insurance allows us to bill for so many per year, so that's how many you're going to get.

These x-rays are putting my kid through college. Yeah. You got anything else on x-rays? No. That was a fine amount of stuff. I'm feeling good about it. You feel good about this one? Sure. I do, too. Yeah. If you want to know more about x-rays, you can check out this really informative article on HowStuffWorks.com. It's got some great diagrams that explain a lot of the stuff we were saying visually. And you can type x-ray into the search bar at HowStuffWorks, and it'll bring that up. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. This is from my buddy Papi in Vancouver. Stuff you should don't listen to that when I was there. And Papi, as this is saying, he's got a pretty cool job. He listened to the

PTSD show and wanted to write in about another option that he works with. He's a registered acupuncturist in Vancouver with special training in trauma and addictions. He's a program called Neurotrophic Stimulation Therapy, NTST, and a large part of the program uses ear acupuncture, an electro acupuncture, to promote neuroplasticity in the brain. He says you can't necessarily directly fix the brain, but you can stimulate the ear nerves and will help the brain re-regulate certain functionalities so it can heal itself. He's been treating trauma and PTSD patients for several years, and the evidence for his efficacy is high. It can be done with acupuncture needles alone or in combination with a mild electrical stimulation. Remember we talked about

transcranial electromagnetic stimulation? Yeah, transdermal cranial stimulation. He says that's one of the things that he's also using to treat PTSD, which is pretty cool. Wow. And he said it makes cognitive behavioral therapies so much easier to introduce because it promotes neuroplasticity and the results help a PTSD sufferer to be more open to and able to receive positive social programming. So here's a program we want to promote. If you want to see all the components in action in this program, you can visit lastdoorrecoverysociety at lastdoor.org slash NTST, or you can donate funds to help purchase a brain scanner so that they can scientifically measure the results of the program, which would really help show the validity of the therapies.

And if you're interested in helping out Poppy's cause there, because he's really big on treating veterans in Canada and the U.S., I shortened his little URL to bitly.ly.ly slash 11-y-n-l-o-q. And that is from Poppy and he says namaste. Thanks a lot Poppy. Is it Poppy with a O? P-O-P-P-I. Nice. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. That's right. And as always join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics visit howstuffworks.com. Chris saw it all and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny.

We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart 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 Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app,

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