Stuff You Should Know - What's the deal with blood types?

Episode Date: April 9, 2015

Blood types have one of the more interesting backstories in medical history. But as much as we've figured out about them and how they work, we still don't know much about why we even have different blood types. Listen in for a truly fascinating look at your most essential bodily fluid. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

attention bachelor nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, 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. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a 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. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's in a certain kind of mood today. She's making jokes and stuff, talking. Yeah, she made a joke that would have been great for the show and I was like well look at you and then she was like oh I didn't say you could use that joke though. Yeah, it's worse. Man. She's got her spinning bow tie on the

day. I'm gonna say the joke. Jerry said that her blood type was A-positive, which she thought was the most optimistic of blood types. It doesn't even make sense. Sure it does. It doesn't. She's A-positive person. Oh, I see. I think of A-positive as like A plus, so like you were the star student. Yeah, the star student of the blood type. Oh, okay. That makes sense though. That's not a bad joke, Jerry, now that I understand. It's the first joke she's given us in seven years. Way to go, Jerry. That's gonna be a trivia question years down the road. That's right. Just knock it off. What was Jerry's one joke? How are you, sir? I'm doing good. Do you know your blood type? I'm feeling A-positive myself. I'm feeling O-negative. Wow, this joke just keeps on giving. I don't even know my blood type.

I don't know mine either. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's great. And I've never had to, I mean, I've given blood IV, but I don't, I don't, I've never received blood. You get the records? No. Don't they test your blood type? I guess, but I don't ever, I don't know. It should be on your donor card, I think. You know what? I do have, and this is so silly, I have some dog tags that I made when I was in high school because I just thought it was cool to wear a dog tag. In shop? Did you make it in shop? No, I didn't make it myself. I had them made. Oh, I see. Oh, hey, Richie Rich. Yeah, I was like, I'm gonna get dog tags because that's Nido. And I don't know, I went through a little phase, I guess. A dog tag phase. And is your blood type on them? It is,

and I actually know where they are, so I could go find that. I can wait. All right, I'll be back. Just give me a couple hours. Well, I legitimately have no idea what my blood type is. Yeah. Because I didn't go through a dog tag phase. Yeah. And it's not on my birth certificate. I went and looked. Not there. Oh, really? Yeah. Was your real name your real name? I think so. I'm pretty sure I wasn't an abducted baby. I've always had this fear that like I look at my birth certificate and find out I'm like three years older or something than I thought I was. That's a strange fear. Which would explain a lot. Really? Yeah, it's fine. Okay. If you were what? I'm 44 now. If you're 40, yeah, you are. Happy birthday. Thank you. If I was 47. Yeah, you and Julius Caesar

just celebrated a birthday. That would be bad. Yeah. Or was it his birthday or he just died? That was his death day. Yeah, that was the opposite of his birthday. Yeah. Although some people have died on their birthday. Some famous people. Oh, really? Yeah, I don't remember who though. But at least one famous person. Sure. Was it Edison or Alexander Graham Bell? Somebody like that. But did they die because of their birthday? Thomas Jefferson, maybe? Yeah. No, it wasn't. Okay. It wasn't anything like that as far as I know. Like they didn't like party so hard. Keep their last breath blowing out their cane. Yeah, yeah. That'd be pretty neat. So blood types. Yeah. Did you know much about this? No, I did not. I didn't either. I just suspected it was

fascinating. I had a vague awareness of it because remember the 10 scientists who were their own guinea pigs? Oh, yeah. So Carl Landsteiner makes an appearance in that. Landsteiner. Yeah. Which I think means, well, Stein is stone. So like Landsteiner. He's a Landsteiner. Nice. Good for him. He was quite a doctor, though, for a Landsteiner. He was fearless. Yeah. Well, not really fearless. He was fearless about needles. He didn't mind drawing blood for himself. Sure. But the reason we bring up Carl Landsteiner is because he's the guy who finally discovered blood types. Way back in like the 1500s, right? 1900. Yeah, exactly. He got the Nobel for it in 1930. Yeah. So it's pretty recent stuff here, you know? Yeah. But I thought the history, you did the research

on this, which... Thanks, man....hats off to you. I appreciate it. I thought the history of it was super interesting. So yeah, Carl Landsteiner was the first guy, and we'll talk about him a little more in depth than what he did. But he was the first guy to identify the ABO blood types. Yeah. But prior to him, people were aware that there was some weirdness with blood and that you couldn't just mix the stuff willy-nilly and expect good results. Because for a very long time, humans, thanks to horrible things like vivisection, knew that our blood was very, very vital. It was a vital life force. Yeah. And back in the day, I think we've talked about bleeding and barbers before, but they were real big on taking blood out of people. And at some point, I guess some doctors

must have taken some drugs and thought, I wonder what would happen if we put blood into a person? Right. Well, I mean, if you think about it, if you're like, this is a vital life force, if you have somebody who's dying from bleeding out like a hemorrhage, which happened a lot like during childbirth, for example, then you would think, maybe if I took some healthy blood and put it into a dying person who's bleeding to death, they'll come back. Yeah. And of course, they had all sorts of like crazy notions back then. So they thought it could like bleeding someone out. They thought putting blood back in someone could cure weird things like insanity, which we, of course, we know now has nothing to do with that kind of thing. Right. So they said, let's try this.

Let's see what we can do. Yeah. They didn't start with human blood oddly enough. They went right to the animal blood. Yeah. And it was not good when they started taking blood from animals like cows, calves, and injecting it into human patients. Yeah, there was a French doctor that put cast blood into a madman. Yeah, Jean-Baptiste Denise. Was that the doctor? That was the doctor. Okay. And he, the madman started to sweat and vomit and urinate the color of chimney soot. And I guess the doctor said, yep, he's a madman. And then he gave him another transfusion after that. Yeah. And then the guy died. And actually, Denise was charged with murder for that. Oh, really? He was forced to quit medicine. Oh, man. It was very, very scandalous. Even though he was

experimenting on a madman, which, you know, at the time was pretty much fair game for anything. Sure. I think the horrific accounts of the whole thing really kind of captured the national imagination. Yeah. And as a result, the decree of chalet was issued by the French monarchy that basically said, oh, no, no, no, no more transfusions. And for a while, basically 150 years, it was banned in France. And the effect that it had kind of extended over the continent, it was basically de facto banned throughout Europe because these horrible experiments by Denise and others that had these terrible results, it was like, you guys, this is mad science and you can't do that anymore because it's really bad news. Well, France also banned ketchup. When? Like three years ago.

They banned ketchup, but is cats up around still? No, they didn't ban the spelling of ketchup. They banned the condiment in school cafeterias. And I think a lot of people were put it on like French cuisine, like they don't want ketchup on their cuisine, but it had to do with the sugar. Yeah, the sugar intake. Yeah. But they said it's okay for French fries. Which they just call fries over there. Exactly. Fritz, I think. So they banned ketchup. And then a long time ago, they banned blood transfusions. That's right. Thank you, France. The decree of Chalet. That's right. And it stayed that way for a long time. I mean, there were doctors here and there in the 19th century that experimented around a little bit, of course. Yeah. Well, the decree of Chalet was 1668,

and it really was prohibitive until the mid 19th century, the early 19th century. Well, and that's when a guy named a physician in Britain named James Blundell was tired of seeing his patients die during childbirth, bleeding out like you were talking about. Yeah, he's one of the heroes of the story. He is. And he said, you know what, there's got to be a better way. And let me try and, you know, let me try and put blood that's not an animal into someone. Yeah, the thing that Blundell figured out was that the great error that the early French doctors were doing was using the blood of a brute, as he put it. Yeah. That doesn't mean a jerk. Right. It means an animal. Right. The guy's like, just let me watch my rugby.

Mixing like the blood of one species with another Blundell decided was just a really bad move and that that's what caused these horrible reactions. So really good start. Right. So human blood, he decided would should work. It would possibly work. And he faced an immediate problem, which was you have no means of getting blood out of somebody and into somebody else at this point, Blundell. What are you going to do? So he invented a contraption for it. Like the first blood transfusion contraption was invented by James Blundell for this very reason. Yeah. And he got some dogs and he practiced on them. And I have a bad feeling that some of those dogs probably died along the way. But he eventually got to a guy that was bleeding to death. And I guess the guy

was like, doctor, I'm bleeding a lot. And could you take some of that blood and put it back into me? But because that might be a good idea. Right. Because I'm told it's important. Like chimneys that you're in the dark. Yeah. Let's just go for this. Sure. And he did. Then the guy died. Well, yeah, but it was two days, which wasn't too bad. So I guess he was like, he didn't see vomit or charcoal soot urine. Right. And the guy did say he was feeling less feinty. So it did revive him for two days. That's a great prognosis, I think. Less feinty. I'm feeling much better now. But because he didn't see all those awful reactions immediately, he was sort of on to something. Yes, even though the guy died. He was encouraged by the results, right? Yeah. So he went on to

perform, I believe, 10 more blood transfusions. And the results as the author of one of the articles we use for research, Carl Zimmer, who wrote a great article in Mosaic about blood types. Yeah. As he put it, the results were dismal. Four out of the 10 survived. That's not too bad. I'm kind of like if this guy is just shooting in the dark at mixing human blood together and he's got a 40% right. Yeah, he's doing okay. Yeah, I agree. But what he proved was that you can take human blood and transfer it from one human to another, but there's still something we don't know. It should be a 100% success rate. What's the problem here? And he never lived to see the answer to it. But it was Carl Landsteiner who figured it out. Before them, because Blundell's success rate was still

pretty low, and he was working in the 1820s, something like that, in the mid 19th century, there was a weird little sidetrack that took place. Is this the milk thing? Yeah. Yeah. In North America, in Canada, in the United States, doctors decided that milk would be a better substitute for transfusions than blood. Yeah. Were they mixing milk into the blood, or were they just injecting milk directly into the bloodstream? Here is some sheep's milk. Yeah. Goat. It looks or smells or tastes nothing like human blood. But let's give it a shot. They're thinking was that the fats in the milk would be converted into white blood cells and then into red blood cells in the bloodstream. So not even close. They tried with cow, they tried with goat, and then eventually

they tried with human milk. And they were doing like massive doses of the stuff like 12 ounces of beer bottles worth of goat milk injected directly into the human bloodstream. And the results were really, really bad. One patient suddenly experienced nystagmus, which is uncontrollable like eye movements and vertigo and spasms. Like immediately upon injecting. Oh yeah. And they're still, they're giving more injections. Right. Some of them were like, okay, this is going to work. Maybe this will subside. They've given them too much, right? So people were slipping into comas and dying. And finally, everyone was like, this is wrong. This is not good. Let's stop doing this. And they started using saline. Yeah. You know, who also used injected milk?

Who? Michael Jackson. That was a totally different kind of milk. But yeah. Right. What was the name of that stuff? Propofol? We never get it right. But I think it is propofol. Propofol. I think you just got it right. Man, so sad. One is a little side note. One of the patients was given milk and then to support that injection. They were injected with morphine and then whiskey. So they're just basically putting anything they wanted to into the bloodstreams of people back then. That's crazy. So the point is this, Chuck. There was a little sidetrack. And the reason there was a sidetrack is because still, even after Blundell's experiments were successful in some cases, blood transfusion still had a really bad name. Yeah. They started to kind of figure it out a

little bit, though, and at least what the problem was when they started to mix blood from different people together in test tubes and they saw clumping. They saw red blood cells sticking together and said, you know what? The reason why this is happening is because these are all from sick people. That was their explanation at first. We got a bunch of sick blood. We're mixing it with sick blood. So that's why it's doing all these funky things. And it wasn't until the land stoner came around and said, you know what? Maybe I should try to mix the blood of healthy people together and see what happens. Yeah. See if that comes. A landmark idea. Yeah. Because, I mean, they knew that blood clumped. That's one of the reasons they went to milk.

But they just thought it was because, well, you're sick already. There's nothing that could be done about that. But yeah, when land stoner came along and thought that, it was groundbreaking. And he did it with his own blood and with the blood of some of his lab assistants. And he just started taking blood samples and then just randomly mixing together people's blood to see if it clumped. And when it didn't clump, he started mapping these patterns. And ultimately came up with what's now known as the ABO blood typing group. Although initially, he came up with type A, type B, and type C. Yeah. And then later on, we found out about A, B. Right. And C was changed to O. Yeah. But it was, I mean, it was pretty crazy that he could even,

I mean, he separated his plasma from his red blood cells. It's nuts that he was even able to do that back then. I didn't know things were that advanced. Yeah. Well, you just inject some morphine and whiskey into your blood and it just kind of falls to the side. Plasma, by the way, you hear that word a lot. You may not know what it is. It's just mostly water. It's the liquid portion of your blood. It's the taxi cab basically that carries everything around. It carries the red blood cells, among other things. Yeah. Hormones, wastes, nutrients, all sorts of stuff. So this is like a really, really, really big advancement in medical science. Yeah. But what did he say?

Oh, he had a great quote. This is my favorite. Like this landmark discovery and he's kind of like, well, you might just want to look. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new tell-all podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all and now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now?

You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. for me. Like, I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Cheekies and Chill on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's right. Save millions of millions of millions of lives.

Open the door for everything to come when it comes to blood typing. And after this break, we're going to get a little bit into what these blood types are and what they mean. All right. We're back and we are talking about blood types and what this means. And it's really pretty simple. It is. It's elegant. I love it. On your red blood cells, you can have lots of things, but you can have sugars and proteins. And those sugars and proteins can be expressed as antigens. And antigens are something that your immune system says, hey, you got a foreign invader coming. You might want to do something about it. Right. It's something that your body can take as a foreign invader, even if it's not

a foreign invader, or even if it's not harmful. But it's something that's found on the surface of your red blood cells. Like pollen is an antigen. We talked about that in the allergy podcast. Right. So a blood type at its core is just a description of what kind of antigen is found on the surface of your red blood cells. Right, which is just a sugar or a protein. Right, depending. So if you have A-type blood, you have the A-antigen present on your cells. If you have B-type blood, you have the B-antigen. If you have O-type blood, you have neither A nor B. And then if you have AB, you have both A and B antigens present on the surface of your blood. That's right. Sounds pretty simple. There's no real issues here, except that blood types are

also associated with the type of antibody your blood produces, your body produces. Right. That's right. And that's a protein that your immune system uses to attack a foreign invader or what it thinks is a foreign invader. Sure. So if you have type A blood, your body produces B antibodies, which means that when your body comes in contact with type B antigens, which would be found on type B blood cells, right? That's right. Your body goes crazy and launches an immune response and attacks those antigens. Yes. And the other way around, in that case, with A and B, they don't like each other. No, they don't. So not only do they have opposing antigens, they have opposing antibodies. So if you mix A and B blood together, bad, bad

things are going to happen. Yeah. And you know what? You can also be allergic to your own blood. Yeah. Which is not good. When we talked about mistaken identity, that is something called hemolytic anemia and immune hemolytic anemia. And that's, it sounds immediately like I thought, well, you're dead if you've got that. Yeah. Because your blood's allergic to itself. Yeah. Apparently people live with it or able to. Almost everyone does. It's really rare to lead to death these days. That's so crazy. I did look it up though. And the first symptom it listed was feeling grumpy, which I thought was like, well, perhaps we all have it. Your, your has immune hemolytic anemia. So like we said, A and B do not like each other at all. I think you said they're

like the Hatfields and the McCoys of blood types. Yeah. I mean, they're a complete opposition to one another. That's right. Type O though is different. Yeah. So type O doesn't have. It does. It doesn't have any antigens on the blood cell surface. So as far as blood transfusions go, you could take type O and give it to type B people, type A people, and type O people, and even type AB people, which makes type O the universal donor. Right. O negative specifically. But that sounds all great. And it is. But because it doesn't have antigens, it produces antibodies against A and B antigens. Yeah. I'm sorry. Antibodies against A and B antigens. That's what you said. Okay. Which means it can only accept O transfusions. Yeah,

which is sad because it's, they're the universal donor. They can give, but they can't, they can only get from other O's because they have antibodies against everything but O's, right? Man. AB is the opposite of O. They're actually the universal recipient. Right. They have the A and B antigen on the surface of the red blood cells, but like you said, they are the universal recipient. So that's great. They don't have any antibodies at all. Right. So they can take, they can take A, they can get B, they can take O, but they have the antigens A and B. So A, B or O can't take AB blood. Yeah. So they just take, take, take. To recap. I'm sure I have AB blood. I'm positive of it. You think? Yeah. To recap,

there's a handy little chart here, which we do not have. No, but it's from the American Red Cross website. Yeah. Like I think everyone that works at the Red Cross probably has this printed out like in their wallet. I'm sure. So everyone who's listening to this in the Red Cross share it with somebody. Group O though can donate red blood cells to anybody. Group A can donate red blood cells to A's and AB's. Group B can donate red blood cells to B's and AB's. Yeah. And group AB can donate to other AB's, but can receive it from all others. Take, take, take. Pretty neat. Um, so there you go. That's the type ABO blood type and it's pretty, it was a sweeping discovery. And that's it, right? No more about blood types. No, this is the end. Beautiful friend. It is not

the end. Uh, no, because it turns out the ABO blood typing or blood groups are really one of many. 22 we're up to by now. Yeah. Remember earlier, I was talking about, um, um, positive or negative. Well, that too. But, uh, I was talking about the dog tags. Yeah. I was talking about that too. Sugars. What else? Proteins. Boom. Sugars. Yes. Sugars and proteins are the two different antigens that you can have on your red blood cells. We said that the ABO, uh, grouping are the sugars. So that leaves the proteins and that's where you get into the RH. Uh, if you've ever heard your blood as negative or positive, that was named after the Rhesus monkey spelled R-H-E-S-U-S, which they were obviously the test

subjects. It basically just says if you're positive for that protein or negative for that protein. Yeah. It's just, it's another antigen and either you have it or you don't. Boom. So you can be O negative, O positive. So that would mean that you are in the O type blood group. So you have O sugar antigens on, or you're no, you don't have A or B on your blood cell surface. Right. But if you're O positive, you would have neither A or B on your surface, but you would have the Rhesus antigen on there. Right. And just like the ABO types, the RH types don't mix either. No. As a matter of fact, there's a really terrible condition called, um, mother fetus incompatibility, which the means the mother is RH negative and the baby is RH positive. Yeah. So as the baby's developing,

its blood cells that carry the RH antigen are taken as foreign invaders by the mother's blood. So the baby, the fetus is attacked by the mother's immune system. Not a good position for a fetus to begin. But this is also very treatable these days. Yeah. I got the impression. Yeah. I looked into it. It used to be a really scary thing, obviously, but now they know how to treat it. And I think on the first, your firstborn, it's not really a big deal at all. Oh yeah. And the reason why, because the blood's not mixing, right? Right. Well, no, that first exposure, your body's like, what the heck is this? It gets caught off guard. Second one, it's kind of like, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, I'm going to get you. And it goes after the fetus.

And then it just gets, this immune response gets more and more heightened with each pregnancy. I am almost positive that's the case. I ran across it during, um, during research for this. And if I'm not mistaken, that's what happens. Okay. Well, I know that 85% roughly of the population is RH positive. So you have much more likelihood to be RH positive than negative. Okay. In life. Huh. You didn't know that? Yeah. I would have guessed negative would be more common. Why? I don't know. I just guessed that. You need to improve your outlook, my friend. Um, so the RH blood groups, the ABO blood groups, there are two of, um, I think 22 at least total blood groups that have been identified. There's other ones like Diego kid, kill,

Duffy blood groups, and all of them are descriptors of antigens that can be found on the surface of a person's red blood cells. So your blood type can go far beyond a positive or O negative. Yeah. It can be like a negative Duffy positive kill, um, to the third power. Really? Who knows? Yeah. Why not? But, um, it's just basically the presence or the absence of these different antigens and these combinations can form. The thing is, we now know in Landstein or figured it out early on, but didn't, didn't discover the actual mechanism. But we know that each one is, is controlled by a different gene or a mutation on a specific gene. And like I said, Landsteiner kind of figured it out early on that it was heritable, that blood types are heritable.

And as a result, blood typing where it was used in early paternity tests, like almost from the outset of, of Landsteiner's research. Sure. Um, the other thing that they, uh, found out was that you can also be a, it sounds a little gross, a secreter or a non-secreter. Yeah. Uh, which means that if you're a secreter, your antigens can be secreted into other fluids, like saliva or mucus in your body toward off other infections. And usually at the surface of the skin. Yeah. So you're, I think 80% are secretors in the United States. And that's just another subclassification even. Yeah. And the fuzz to rule people out, um, quickly, like whether you're a secreter or non-secreter. Uh, Louie's a secreter. We got a secreter here. He's secreting all over the place.

Um, so like you said, land, uh, the Landsteiner determined that you could test paternity and because of that in the 1990s, uh, that led to the discovery of that ABO gene. Yeah. And basically if, uh, you can have that a antigen be expressed or if something is a little tweaked, you can have that B antigen expressed, right? Or if they're both tweaked, you can have both a B. I think in that case you inherit the A mutation from one parent and the G mutation from another parent. Yeah. Did you say G? Uh, B. There's another blood type, the AG. I just came up with it. Uh, and then if it's completely shut off, uh, then that is where you get your O blood type. Right. But we have to point out, um, that the ABO blood type isn't like the A is the

presence of an engine, B is the presence of an engine and O is the presence of nothing. Right. It's not the case. Um, again, Carl Zimmer in that Mosaic article put it like if the A antigen is like a two story home in one form or fashion and the B antigen is like a different type of two story home. The O is like the single story ranch that the second stories are built on top of. The mid-century modern. Yeah. To love. It's my preference in houses. I like those too. Um, I wonder what, uh, I wonder what blood type the double wide trailer is. I don't know. It's a single story. So technically it'd be O as well. They're secretors for sure. So Chuck, um, we talked, you said that RH positive was the most common for the RH blood type, right? That's right. What's

the most common for ABO types? Uh, well, you've got O is the most O positive is the most common. Then you've got a, then you've got B and you've got AB as the least common. And, um, across ethnic groups, it's, uh, it's pretty interesting. Um, Hispanic folks have higher number of O's. Uh, Asian folks have a higher, higher number of B's. And there's reasons for this, which we'll get into later. They're pretty interesting. I think. Yeah. So, um, we should say with, when you do, we've kind of touched on what happens when you mix blood, you remember the chimney suit urine. But the, the real on the molecular level, on the cellular level, what's going on when you mix blood types is that the antigens present in one blood type that doesn't mix with another one attracts

the antibodies. Yeah. Because it thinks it's some foreign invader. Yep. So it's like, uh, you're coming into a house that has antibodies that are primed against the antigens on your blood, right? Right. And, um, those antigens or those antibodies surround the antigens and just kind of collect and clump around the red blood cells. That's a glutination. Yeah. That, uh, that just sounded gross to me. It does. It's a gross word. I think medical, I think it figured out medical terms that have G's in them and glug. Yeah. It just sounds kind of gross. Yeah. Because what happens after a glutination is it coagulates. Yeah, your blood sounds gross too. Yeah. And that thickened blood is tough to pump through your body. It's pretty simple really. You get blood clots everywhere

and you have trouble breathing. Your lungs fill with blood and, uh, you drown in it. And again, your, if it, if you're injected with cow milk, your eyes go crazy and you spasm and slip into a coma and die. But if not, you're just going to drown in your own internal bleeding in your lungs. But what's going on is the result of a massive immune response launched by your body because of the presence of what it takes as a foreign invader. If you take the blood of somebody with the same blood type as yours, even though it comes from another person entirely, your blood is used to the antigen present on that blood type because that's the one it produces itself. And it just thinks it's more of the same blood that it produced in your body. That's right. So this is all super

interesting. Uh, I guess after this break, we're going to talk a little bit about why we have blood types and where they came from to begin with. Attention, bachelor nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new tell all podcast, the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope, but I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody here for me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken

publicly for two years about this. And I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day, truly every day of my life. I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's cheekies from cheekies and chill podcast. And I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's love is blind season three. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me

as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to cheekies and chill on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Before the break, my friend, we were talking about what types come from. It's true. That was the title of the segment. Well, I had no, I don't even know what that accent was or who that was supposed to be. It was the one group that you could make fun of now, which is this non-existent when you just made the indefinable group. I was thinking about that the other day. Is there anybody like Germans? You can make fun of Germans still, right? You can make fun of white men. Oh, yeah. Because like been asking for it for millennia. Totally. Yeah.

There's nothing you can say to a white man that is, you know, truly offensive. It's true. Yeah, I guess it is. Sad. Man, this just took a really surprising turn. I remember my sociology teacher in college just taught us that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Cause they, he was putting up bad words about different races and ethnic groups and sexes and he's like, you might notice something. He's a, there's no word that you can call a white man that is truly, truly offensive. Yeah. And there really isn't. I mean, a D bag, I guess, but that's not offensive. You're just either that or you're not. Yeah. It's the truth or it's not. All right. So let's get back to blood types. Where did it come from? I know who it is. It's Balki Bartakamus. I can't make, no, he was from an unknown country,

right? Yeah. Mekinos. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. All right. So primate species, my friend. We found out that primate species had blood that you could mix with human blood. It wasn't a cow. It wasn't a sheep, but primates because they're closer relatives than cows and sheep. Well, that's what that was the assumption, but it's still scientists were kind of scratching their heads. They're like, wait a minute, what are we to make of this? Because it suggests two things. It suggests that either blood types are so old that they predate human and like chimps and gorillas divergent. Yeah. So we share some sort of common ancestor that have blood types itself or that blood types evolved independently in different species because it's like such a great

idea, right? Right. Either way, they still said, what are these things for? Yeah. And some people for a long time said that O was the original, the OG blood type. Yeah. Which makes sense because it's the simplest one. Yeah. And they thought that our original ancestors in Africa had type O. Other people thought AB might have been the original because it evolved into AB and O, which that's what it makes sense to in one lens. Right. That was broken down into its constituents. Yeah. Yeah. But neither one of them, it turns out are probably true, right? Well, we honestly don't know. We just, there's first of all, not all of the primate's genes have been surveyed, so we can't really say. But they've looked into a lot of them, right?

They have. And the results are still just kind of baffling like gorillas just have type B. Yeah. I think chimps have type A and O, but that's it. Right. We don't quite know what to make of it. We do know that it's not just primates that have blood types. Cats and dogs both do. Yeah. And I'd never thought about it that you can have your cat or dog, if you want to feel really good about yourself. Yeah. But really piss off your animals. Yeah. You can take them in and have them give blood. Yeah. There's animal dog, like dog and cat blood banks. Yeah. There's one right here in Decatur. Consult your vet. Huh? Yeah. Consult your vet. Piss off your cat. Take them in to give blood and explain to them what a great thing they're doing. Right. Right. Just wear

like leather falcon regloves while you're doing it. It is a great thing to do, but yeah, it just never occurred to me. Of course, that's what you need to do as a responsible pet owner. Right? I guess. Maybe start with donating your human blood first and then once you got that down pat, bring your dog into the mix. Well, you have to go to a special dog and cat blood bank. Yeah. Consult your vet. And I think if I looked at A, all mine are too old, which is sad. I think you can't be over seven. Oh, is that right? Well, at least at the one indicator. Maybe there's different. You're looking for spry blood. I guess so. Yeah. It's very sad for me and my guys. So here's a neat thing though, Josh. Blood types aren't even set in stone necessarily. They can

change. Isn't this mind blowing? It is. And I found this really neat. Well, a couple of neat things. One is not only can it change, we'll go and explain how it can change naturally. Well, our old friend Epigenetics. Yeah. What was that episode we did? Can my grandfather's diet shorten my life? One of our best. Yes, it was. And no one has any ideas about epigenetics because of the title. Yeah. But if you are looking for an epigenetics episode, go listen to that one. But basically, because of changes in the way genes are expressed, if you're say a mutation on your gene is shut down epigenetically, then all of a sudden, over time, because red blood cells have about a four month lifespan, your blood is constantly regenerating itself, you will turn into an

Oh, blood type person within your lifetime. Yeah, may not even notice. And let until you get a blood transfusion. But I imagine they're good friends at the Red Cross test blood type, that kind of thing with each donation. Yeah, and just leave it to to presumption. I don't think we've even pointed out they to test this, they still use the similar method of mixing blood and seeing if it clumps. Yeah, the same thing that the landowner did. Yeah, way back in the day. So I found another couple of cool things, though. This is from two years ago, and I couldn't get anything more recent. I think it is still under review. Okay. But they think now that they can actually not synthetically, but just not naturally change your blood type to Oh, right, to make you and

this would be great because if you could change blood type, and this is in the body, this is in the blood bag, right, change it from a B to Oh, then that means all of a sudden you have a more valuable blood, because it's more universally accepted. And what they've done is, of course, it was the University of Copenhagen Professor Einrich Klausen, they're always doing the best work it seems like those great stuff. So they found they studied 2,500 different types of fungi and bacteria and found they're looking for proteins that could help and they found two that could help. One was called Elizabeth Kingia meningospecitum septicum. Nice. My guess is that Professor Einrich either has a daughter or a wife named Elizabeth. Yeah, who's like, I got a bacteria

named after me or he's in big trouble. And then the other one is Bacteriodesis fragilis. And basically those two yielded enzymes that remove those A and B antigens. Yeah, they just shear those sugars off. They go in crazy and made it the O type. Yeah. So I don't know where that's at now, but that was just from two years ago. And then this case of this girl that doctors say is a one in six billion event. At nine years old, she got a liver transplant and everyone knows when you get an organ transplant, getting it to take is a big deal. Yeah. Not having it rejected. And what they do is they give you medication usually for life to make sure it stays not rejected. What they found with her was that when she got her new liver,

the drugs actually made her sick, the ones to keep her from rejecting it. And what they found when they tested her blood was that her body was changing its blood type and completely changed its blood type to where she didn't need those drugs anymore. It changed from O negative to O positive, right? Yep. And she completely went off those drugs. And I think she's like 20 years old now. And the doctors, I don't think they have any explanation for it other than I guess this can happen. Yeah. Her body is like the kind of local tough that fights with pool cues or something like that. Yeah. It's like, all right, this is what I got to do. I got to do what I got to do. Keep this liver. So that's pretty awesome. That was super awesome. One in six billion.

It's pretty nice to have that quantified for you. Yeah. You know, I bet she feels like a lucky lady. Yeah. So Chuck, we've kind of laid out by now that blood types are confounding science still. Yeah. But there are some guesses, some assumptions about why we have them. Although that is the, that is still the question that plagues blood researchers. Why do we have blood types? Well, you'd think it was because, you know, because they're fighting off blood-borne invaders, like that's why we have them. But that doesn't explain why we have different ones. Right. Exactly. And then what confounds that even further is the fact that apparently some blood types actually increase your susceptibility to some blood-borne invaders. Yeah. So some blood types help certain, fight

certain diseases and not others. And like you said, then there are others that make you more susceptible. Yeah. And not only in the case of like where, oh, not having this A antigen makes me more susceptible because the A antigen fights off, say, I think malaria. Yeah. Malaria. More. It's not even the case of that. In some cases, having an antigen proves to be food for certain kind of germs and bacteria that cause illness. Yeah. Like it actually binds easier. Yeah. It binds or they eat like the sugar of the protein and they just go attack your body. Like it's like food, like your blood type is food to certain kinds of diseases that make you terribly sick, right? Yeah. So from an evolutionary standpoint, those things should not exist.

Yeah. The only thing to me that makes sense is when you included this word in here, which is variation. Yeah. And that to me makes sense because variation is generally pretty good for a population. Right. Because it covers more bases. And in this case, that may be why. I mean, they have found Kevin Kane, this guy at University of Toronto, did a lot of investigating on this and found that, like you said, if it was type O, protects against malaria better. Type A makes you more susceptible to smallpox. Yeah. Type B, you're more likely to be infected by E. coli. So it's just, you should know what your blood type is and what you're more likely to get and not get. Yeah. I would think. And again, remember we said that some

some antigens serve as binding sites for certain kinds of bacteria. Yeah. Same thing with the norovirus, which has nothing to do with your blood stream. Yeah, that doesn't seem to make any sense at first. At first until you find out that not only does your body express your blood type antigens on the surface of your red blood cells, it also expresses them on the surface of the cells that line your gut. Right. And norovirus has that a lot to do with your gut. So specifically, I think if you're type O, you have basically what amounts to a landing pad for norovirus to bind to and you are really going to be hating it compared to everybody else on the cruise ship that has type A, B or A, B. Or if you're type O, you might get a rupture to Achilles

tendon or an ulcer a little more easily. Isn't that weird? Yeah. They've linked a lot of a lot of susceptibility to illnesses to different blood types. So infections, cancers, memory loss, heart disease. Yeah. Get this type A blood types are most susceptible to stress, which makes a lot of sense because the type A personality is like that. I don't think those are linked. Go, go, go. Yeah. Let's get things done kind of thing. Yeah. Type A. But that's not what you know. We don't know. All this ignorance though led to a discovery. Well, it didn't lead to but it's exemplified by the discovery in 1952 and Bombay patients that didn't have A, B, O blood type at all. Yeah. Confounding. It's called the Bombay phenotype. It was discovered in the 50s.

And basically it's really rare. Again, Carl Zimmer comes in to say if O's that single story ranch and A is a two story and B is a two story house, then this Bombay phenotype is an empty vacant lot. Yeah. Like these are the guys that have nothing there. Yeah. As far as A, B goes. And in India, you're about one in 10,000. You have one in 10,000 chance of having this blood type and one in 4 million in the world. But the thing that's confounding about is these people don't appear to be any more or less fit or healthy than people in the A, B, O blood group. Yeah. It's just if you need that blood, you're in bad shape. Yeah. You have to get Bombay. Because I think, I think blood has a shelf life of about 42 days. So I mean, imagine places like

India and Bombay especially, they probably have a lot more of this on hand. But if you're traveling in the United States, maybe you might have a bit of a time if you're bleeding out. I would guess so. It was also a general hospital subplot. Was it really? Yeah. I was just poking around and it was like a, leave it to the soap opera to make that like the rarest blood type, a subplot, a paternity subplot. It was how they proved out paternity for one of the doctors. Oh, somebody had the Bombay phenotype. Oh, yeah. They're like, it is you because you have the Bombay phenotype. And you're a secreter, say the fuzz. Gross. So we've talked about how the blood types are, they make you more or less susceptible to disease, right? Yeah. They think that that's

one of the reasons why different blood types appear in different ethnic groups differently. They think that it's evidence that in the not too distant evolutionary past, certain parasites or bacteria or germs or viruses that have some sort of preference for a certain blood type passed through an area and largely wiped out the people with that blood type and left the other blood type standing. Yeah. We were talking earlier about in China and actually in Russia and India too, they have a lot more blood type B. And that is because the bubonic plague and malaria outbreaks that swept through those countries not too long ago and basically wiped out a lot of the O's and A's. So you've got a lot more B's. This hasn't been proven in science. Things aren't proven,

but there's more and more and more evidence that backs it up. Seems to be a correlation. Yeah, there is. And it's not just China, Russia and India. Africa has a lot of type O people, which is less susceptible to malaria. And Africa has a lot of malaria. So it does make a lot of sense that that's what happened. So even if the reason we have blood types isn't because it provides a defense against bloodborne illnesses or whatever, it's a function for sure of blood types. Yeah. If you want to not get teleological here. Well, who does? Teleologists. We'll finish up here with two examples of, well, one example of Hocom, one example that may or may not be Hocom, but it's probably Hocom. At the very least, it's fun. The blood type diet.

There was a naturopath named Peter Damont. The Dammo. Diadamo. Diadamo. I actually, funny enough, I was like, how do you pronounce that? I found an old Regis and Kathy Lee. I don't know if I would trust that. Well, he was standing next to him and he seemed to agree with it. So usually though, when it's a diapostrophe is just Dottomo and not Diadamo. He didn't correct Regis. Well, who does? Kathy Lee. Oh, this is pre Kelly Rippa. Yeah, it was Regis and Kathy Lee. No. Well, so she was drunk. Regis is Regis. Jesus. All right. This is a 1996. He is a naturopath with my wife calls a Hokey Pokey doctor. And he published a very famous and popular book called Eat Right for Number Four, Your Type, Eat Right for Your Type. Seven million copies to date.

60 languages it's been translated into. And he postulated that our blood types came along over the years as we evolved and that we should eat according to when our blood type, what was going on when our blood type first came about. Right. Like evolutionarily speaking. Exactly. So like the, I think he's he decided that the type O blood type came about during hunter gather era. Yeah. I'm you saying he decided is very key here. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what it was based on other than his guesses. Sure. But he and then he said type A was the dawn of agriculture. Type B was from the Himalayan Highlands, 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Yeah. And then he said type A, B is a modern blending of type A and type B. Right. Pretty convenient. So if you, for example,

or type A, your blood type came about during the hunter gather days. Yeah. And you, your diet should consist mostly of like raw vegetarian foods. No, that's during the dawn of agriculture. Hunter gather would be meat eaters. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So that would be type O would be the meat eaters. Right. So type A would be dawn of agriculture. So you would eat vegetables or should he say like you. Yeah. Type O meat rich. Right. No grains and dairy type B lots of dairy. Also called the death diet. Right. And to avoid foods that aren't suited to your blood type. And he did this. He said it will reduce infections and you'll lose weight and you can fight cancer and I can sell books. A lot of books pretty much was the reason and they've done testing

over the years. Well, the Red Cross of Belgium did a lot of people have and they've all said this is not true. No, they, the Red Cross of Belgium did a survey of a thousand studies and found no direct evidence supporting the health effects of the ABO blood type diet and quote. Yeah. But that's not to say that these diets aren't good for you. For example, that type A diet, it's basically vegetarianism. So of course, you're going to lose weight. You're going to lower your body mass index. You may, whatever, you're going to, you're going on a vegetarian diet. Right. But none of these have to do with blood type. No, like if you were a type O, go on the type A diet and you will see those same benefits,

same effects. So don't go on the type B diet. So basically it seems like this guy just took some, some pretty good diets except for, yeah, the type, the type B diet is. Yeah. You'd a bunch of fats and dairy products. All the fats have gotten a bad rap. Yeah. I mean, not all fats are bad. Of course we know that, but you don't want to eat just that. Type B diet is not the one to go with. No. So that was Hocom. Allegedly. This, I'm at the risk of respecting our friends in Asia. I'm not going to call this complete Hocom. Well, they, because they believe it pretty like, like we believe is actually, it's going to say like we believe astrology. A lot of people here just have astrology is like a fun thing to read. Yeah. They really take it seriously in Japan,

apparently. Yeah. So I don't know what you would compare it to over here. I don't even know that it has an analog. Astrology. I guess. I guess that, but the, but yeah, the distinction is that like over there, more people definitely take it as, as fact. Yes. I'm saying they take it way more seriously, but it's being born with something that determines your personality type. Gotcha. So back in 1927 to KG Furukawa, who is a professor at Tokyo Women's Teacher School, he decided that blood types, and this is based on his observations, but blood types and personality types were related somehow. Yeah. And he started to do some studies and he decided, I've got this figured out. I've got them mapped. I have type A, type B, type A, B and type O personality types

mapped. And it actually caught on in the east big time and still is today. And the Japanese actually have a word for a type of harassment, say basically getting passed over for a job or not getting into a certain school based on your blood type. Yeah. Butohara. Yeah. Is that right? Sure. Is it good pronouncing? I think it is. pronunciation. Yeah. I couldn't even pronounce that right. Wow. But blood type harassment. Yeah. And we'll go over these because it's so cute. It's interesting. If you're a blood type A, you are going to be kind and compassionate and put others before yourself. You're calm on the outside, but you have a lot of inner turmoil. But you're a good listener and you're going to have a lot of friends. And you get along with

others well, but it's typically at the expense of your own sense of balance and happiness. You're just giving a little too much. Yeah. You're not speaking up for yourself necessarily in order to keep the peace. That's right. That's type A. Yeah. Type B is the George Clooney of blood types. It is smug. No, he's not smug. What? I don't think he's smug. What? It's like it's defining characteristic. I don't think he's smug at all. Oh my God. Really? Yes. I'm about to faint. No, I don't find them smug at all. I think if you agree with someone, then you probably don't find them smug. I agree with him in a lot of ways. I think it's a really cool thing to do is spend your money to hire satellites to track warlords in Africa. That's about as cool a thing as you

can do with your riches as anybody, right? Sure. I still think he's smug. I don't think he's smug. I can't. I don't think he can help it. Maybe we have different definitions of smug. If you mean handsome and winning and charming, then yes, he's smug. And being 110% aware that you're handsome and charming and winning at any given moment down to the molecular level, that's my definition of smug. Awareness of your good looks? Yeah, overconfident self-awareness is smugness. I'm on Team Clooney. I'm not opposed to George Clooney. I just can't imagine not thinking he's smug. Well, imagine it, baby. I don't even know you right now. Well, that's because I'm a personality type B, blood type B, like my buddy George. That means I'm outgoing and friendly. I'm a people

person and I don't do that at the expense of my own feelings. It just comes naturally to me, George. Whereas like a type A, you're a people person, but you really expend a lot of energy being a people person. Type B, like you said, it just comes naturally. You're very adjustable. You're good at a job if you have to deal with people. I don't think we said that type A blood people don't like to have jobs where they deal with other people. Right. It gives examples of programmers, accountants, writers, librarians, or good jobs for type A. In type B, like Mr. Clooney is not suitable for marriage because they are flirty and playful and smug. Yes, let's say Korean women. That's right. You added the smug thing, by the way. At the end? Yes. Of course I did. That was

pretty smug. Type A, B, though. They are freedom loving. Yeah. They're strong and rational. Yeah. They don't worry about the little things. They can look at life's challenges with emotion removed and say, this is what I need to do to get past this. So they're psychopaths. Not necessarily. They seem to not have issues with relationships and they're quite popular. They seem to be the winningest personality group. All right. I'm going to go with psychopath for that. I mean, I see what you're saying, but yeah, I don't think so. And then finally, we have personality O, blood type O. You're responsible and practical and rule conscious. You're a great leader and very determined to achieve your goals. Yeah. You're physically strong, so you might be a good athlete.

Yeah, and they're most happy with other type O's or type A, B's. And that are the personality blood types. I had never heard of that. That's all we know about blood types. I thought that was pretty neat. I'd never heard that that was a big thing. Yeah, you told me about that. I was like, we're doing blood type. She's like, oh, you know about like Japanese blood types, right? Blood type personality types. You're like, what? Yeah. She's like, you know, like George Clooney's smug. You're like, we're meant to be together. It's funny. We just hold hands and watch monuments, men are just like, oh my God. All right, Chuck. If people want to know more about blood types, I would steer clear how stuff

works because it has one of the densest, most incomprehensible articles I've ever read in my life on the site about blood. How's that reply? It really needs rewriting. Yeah. This thing you put together was great. Thank you. I appreciate that. And a lot of it was based on a Mosaic article by Carl Zimmer about blood types. I strongly recommend you go read. And since I said Carl Zimmer, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this Truck Drive and Chemist. Guys, I was a truck driver from 05 to 08 and listen to your show back then. I left trucking to go to college and I was taking chemistry. We had to do a research paper on a compound. And so I always want to know about diesel. So I looked into diesel. We should do one on diesel, he says. It sounds

pretty interesting. Let's do it. I learned some really interesting thing about Rudolph Diesel's invention and about the man himself. The original diesel compound was actually made from peanuts. He invented the engine for small plants. Was it George Washington Carver? No. It was Rudolph Diesel. He invented the engine for small plants that could power not biological plants. Like a power plant? Yeah. A diesel plant. Yeah. You could power a warehouse to compete with the big industrial warehouses during the Industrial Revolution. So he was a man of the people. Cool. But here's the conspiracy theory part. Rudolph Diesel found out his diesel engine was going to be powering Germany's newest warships called Untersee Boots. Oh, that means

undersea boats. What are you going to say? Not that. Not that. And he was really angry that they would use his invention for war. So he told the German naval representative that if they were going to use his diesel for war, he would take his designs to England so they would have it too and could counter Germany and that Germany might as well not use it. And they shot him on the spot. Basically. That's not a smart thing to announce. No. He pushed all his chips in and lost. He told off the government, boarded a ferry to England in the evening to arrive in the morning. He left a word to wake him since he had an appointment with the naval office in Britain. And when the ferry docked the next morning, he was gone. Eight days later, his body was found floating in the

English Channel. And this all happened a few short years before World War One. Wow, I can't believe that like government agents would assassinate somebody when they threatened to take a very important thing to another country. Yeah. So that sounds like a good podcast. He says you have a man fighting for the common man, man that didn't like his invention means for war and engine we still use today and could be using more in the future. And that is from Russ Fortney. Russ, my friend, I think you just did a little mini podcast. Very neat. Thanks a lot for that. Man, I love, love history. Me too. Love history. Never knew about Rudolph Diesel. No, no idea. I didn't even know it was somebody's last name. I didn't either. It was a thing, you know. Yeah, me too. It's like

Jimmy Gasoline. Right. Or that Elizabeth Bacteria. Yeah, Elizabeth Bacteria. Jimmy Gas. Yes. If you want to tell us something that we don't know about that will blow our tops because it's so cool. Like Russ, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and as always join us on the web at our luxurious home stuff you should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Attention bachelor nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, 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. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in major league baseball, international banks, k-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a 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.